The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears

[HulaMom]

I'm re-reading a book, Good Calories Bad Calories. It is a MUST-READ. Gary Taubes is a correspondent for the journal Science and he reviews the scientific field of obesity.
What he shows is that the current 'low-fat' and calorie restricted diets are based on very weak scientific evidence and the mindset of a small inner circle of researchers. They have never done scientific clinical trials. They have not followed protocols typical to medical research. But they have controlled the media view of obesity in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Before they came on the scene (and when Dr. Atkins was in medical school) it was widely understood that carbohydrates are fattening. The attack on Atkins by the AMA sounds to be very personal. He threatened the inner circle and insulted them. They struck back by claiming that his approach was 'dietary nonsense.'
Please do read this book. You will come to understand how our nation has been so misled on nutrition.
His key conclusion is that we still are not giving nutrition the proper scientific attention.
This is a dense and detailed book, but I highly recommend it to you.

[Desertthorn]

Re: The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears

Your the second person who has recommended that book and I have called the library again and its still not in. I might have to Amazon it but hate it when my DH rolls his eyes at me. "Another diet book" LOL

[kate58]

Re: The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears

Good Calories, Bad Calories is most definitely NOT a diet book, and is worth owning rather than borrowing - I'm willing to be bet you'll read it more than once and want to open bits to show people.

[Condor]

Re: The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears

I am on my third reading of this fantastic book. Like Kate said it is definately worth the buy, can't recommend it enough.

[HulaMom]

Re: The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears

I'm reading it over and over. Here is something that I'm trying to unravel.

The pop-culture has latched on the the hypothesis that when we eat an excess of calories that we do not burn in exercise, the remainder gets accumulated as fat. That leads to the recommendation to eat less and exercise more. The idea is that we are holding everything else constant, and that fat cells just are passive responders to an equation of energy in, energy out. That is, people overeat and get fat. This is a "BRAIN" problem because obese people don't have enough willpower.

An alternative is that overweight people are overeating because their food is being stored in adipose tissues (fat cells) rather than being used to make energy. Thus they feel hungry, and are probably undereating/undernourished. This lack of energy also makes exercise and activity more exhausting. It is like a signal that the body is in a fat accumulation mode (like hibernation) and energy needs to be conserved. In this context, low calorie and high exercise reeks havoc on the metabolism. I CAN RELATE TO THAT!

If hypothesis II is correct, then it is a HORMONAL and metabolic problem (not a brain problem). Calories are pulled to fat cells because of hormonal imbalances which regulate fat metabolism. Some of this is genetic (don't we know it) and some is environmental. The big culprit is the change in diet in the last 30-40 years, largely the refined carbohydrates and easily digestible starches.

That just blows my mind away!

This is NOT a diet book. It is a book on the state of the art (and lack thereof) of how our bodies function.

[brandywine1241]

Re: The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears

I am about half way through this most enlightening book. It is not about diets, or even nutrition. It is an education in how the people who shape public health policy go about doing it, and it is not all that scientific. The most eye-opening thing I have learned so far is the theory of mass preventative medicine that says in order to encourage behavior that will benefit for a segment of the population, social pressure must be created by convincing everyone adopt the behavior (ie eat low fat-low cal to prevent heart disease in some people). If you do wait to get it from the library, I'll bet you will end up buying it anyway.