Good Calories, Bad Calories is about science, history and politics. It is a book that explores the conventional wisdom concerning the so-called diseases of civilization: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity. It explores and debunks the conventional wisdom that heart disease is caused by fat consumption and then thoroughly describes and supports a long-standing alternative hypothesis, that the diseases of civilization are caused by refined carbohydrates (flour, sugar, white rice, etc.). As such it is loosely connected with the Atkins and Paleo diets, but is not a diet book. The only diets mentioned are those in the numerous studies he describes.
The first half of the book focuses on heart disease, its supposed causes, the government agencies and institutions pushing the fat/cholesterol hypothesis, and the problems with that hypothesis. Turns out there's very little connection between eating fat and high cholesterol, and a tenuous connection between high cholesterol and heart disease. Why then would the government and academics have been pushing this for so many decades? Because the views of an aggressive academic, Ancel Keys, who had been crusading against fat for a good while, with poor scientific support, was picked up and made official government policy in 1977.
It's possible to point to a single day when the controversy was shifted irrevocably in favor of Keys's hypothesis--Friday, January 14, 1977, when Senator George McGovern announced the publication of the first Dietary Goals for the United States. The document was "the first comprehensive statement by any branch of the Federal Government on risk factors in the American diet," said McGovern. [Today that would be reason enough to dismiss it. Not so then.]
This was the first time that any government institution (as opposed to private groups like the AHA) had told Americans they could improve their health by eating less fat. In so doing, Dietary Goals sparked a chain reaction of dietary advice from government agencies and the press that reverberates still, and the document itself became gospel. It is hard to overstate its impact. Dietary Goals took a grab bag of ambiguous studies and speculation, acknowledged that the claims were scientifically contentious, and then officially bestowed on one interpretation the aura of established fact.
One reporter suggested that the reason for the pamphlet was that the committee, which included such figures as McGovern, Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole and Hubert Humphrey, was facing a downgrade to a subcommittee and needed to prove its usefulness. The consequence? First the national media, then the academic institutions got behind the committee recommendations and dietary fat was under assault for the next 30 years. And according to the rest of Taubes' book, the resulting reduction in dietary fat has lead to a dramatic increase in dietary carbohydrates and all the diseases (and more) that were intended to be reduced by the recommendation in the first place.
Its worth pointing out that Keys used that scare tactic so common among environmentalists today: the data is inconclusive, but we have to act
now to save lives.
Taubes is a science journalist and states in the book that it wouldn't have been possible without the internet. He used the internet to help him cover a vast amount of english and foreign literature, to track down and interview scientists and politicians, in brief to survey the entire literature of diet and disease from the first fad diet in the mid-19th century to the present. The literature covers hundreds of studies as well as numerous descriptions of cultural differences in diet and their consequences for disease.
Taubes' positive contention is that consuming carbohydrates leads to insulin production. Insulin signals cells to convert circulating sugars to fat. If you're not ingesting sufficient calories to feed your cells as well as accumulate that fat, then you starve your cells (even
while accumulating fat) and become hungry. Chronically high carb consumption and insulin levels can then lead to obesity (even in the face of vigorous attempts to diet and excercise), insulin resistance (type II diabetes), feeds nascent cancer growths, and perhaps causes some other ailments due to glycation (Alzheimers, aging, cataracts, loss of skin suppleness).
It wasn't until I read
The Logical Leap by David Harriman that I realized what I liked so much about Taubes' book: he attempts to survey the entire field of nutrition and integrate it all in support of a single hypothesis. (The same process Harriman describes of Newton and other scientific greats.) Respectful of his reader, Taubes often indicates the epistemological status of various contentions, i.e. what's certain, what's probable, what's possible. Of the carbohydrate hypothesis he indicates that it is probable, but still requires rigorously controlled human studies. Hopefully this will happen soon, and if it does it'll be thanks to Taubes. (See this
recent study on low-carb diets and cancer.)
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in diet, disastrous government campaigns, science or anyone who has struggled with weight problems or just wants to eat healthier.
