Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

[RitaCeleste]

Re: Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

After reading threw Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, I don't think I could handle reading about countless studies being ignored in favor of supporting low-fat diets. And at the bottom of it basicly to keep selling horrible food to people. I'm mad about the time I spent counting fat grams. I'm mad that I attempted to loose weight on rice cakes. I'm annoyed that the school food is bad for the kids. Its flustrating that the doctor loves dad's blood work when he's on Atkins, yet will say Atkins has too much fat in it! BLAH! Its just so hard to know that my grandparents had it right and so much money is being spent to promote lies. Its sad. I spent some time on an eating disorder board that focuses totally on emotions and not on the physical addictions to junk foods. Make all foods legal they say. Call your diet a meal plan they say. When I found Atkins and it worked, I was in heaven. I think more and more people are getting that it works now. But its like the truth has been made into a dirty little secret. SUGAR AND WHITE FLOUR ARE EVIL! Teachers flipped when my child refussed to eat it at lunch and told them so as a kid. She eats the school food now, but stand behind what I taught her.

[brandywine1241]

Re: Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

I have it at home - I've TRIED reading it - and I would LOVE to get through it...but it's just almost over my head in a lot of chapters.
I consider myself pretty intellectual - but sometimes, when I pick up this book, it's hard to read for some reason.

Hang in there, Keriann. Taubes is supposed to be coming out with a layman's version in the near future.

I think the most important thing I learned from GCBC is that the only scientific studies that are worthwhile are those based on hard data. Now, whenever I read about a study describing some new breakthrough, my first question is "Where is the data to support it?". It's amazing how often these new insights are based on some researcher's deductions or inferences based on his/her observations.

[not2late]

Re: Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

I have it at home - I've TRIED reading it - and I would LOVE to get through it...but it's just almost over my head in a lot of chapters.
I consider myself pretty intellectual - but sometimes, when I pick up this book, it's hard to read for some reason.

I promise, one day - I WILL get through it!

Then you might be better off reading Enig, Fallon ad Ravnskov. They break it down into more understandable terms (at least for me.) Taubes would have had to plagarize their work in order to make it simpler in his book.

Re: skipping the first 101 pages....

Taubes lays down alot of the background in those first 101 pages. It's like if you skip the first 200 pages of the Lord of the Rings. Sure you'll get to the action parts sooner, but you wouldn't have a clue who and how the characters tie into each other.

[not2late]

Re: Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

Consider a porterhouse steak, for example, with a quarter-inch layer of fat. After broiling, this reduces to almost equal parts fat and protein. Of the fat, slightly more than half (51 percent) is monounsaturated, which lowers the (bad) LDL cholesterol and raises the (good) HDL. Slightly less than half (45 percent) is saturated fat, some of which raises LDL, but all of it raises HDL. A third of that saturated fat is stearic acid, which raises (the good) HDL, and has no effect on the bad LDL. The remaining fat (4 percent) is polyunsaturated, which lowers LDL but has no meaningful effect on HDL. (You can look up the numbers yourself in the USDA National Nutrient Database.)

Not to rain on Taubes' parade, but the USDA Nutrient Database doesn't list a porterhouse steak with fat trimmed to 1/4 (one quarter) inch. It only lists that ssteak cut with fat trimmed to 0 inches or 1/8 (one eighth) inch.

And for 100 grams of this kind of steak (the 1/8 inch fat), it has 22.11 grams of fat, 9.78 grams monounsaturated which means that it is 43% monounsaturated, not 51%. But since Taubes is using a steak that isn't even listed on the USDA nutrient database, it will be hard to double-check his figures.



PS, I'm not trying to disprove Taubes. I'm only trying to show you HAVE to double check figures so you won't get duped. I read Enig, so I knew that monounsaturated % he gave for beef was alittle off.

Editing to add....

I looked up beef tallow on the USDA Nutrient Database and the percent monounsaturated fat for beef tallow is roughly the same as what the USDA lists under the porterhouse steak. Beef tallow is beef fat---100% beef fat.

Taubes's numbers look more like pork fat/lard, which has 50 % monounsaturated fat, 10 percent polyunsaturated fat and 40 percent saturated fat.

[yanto]

Re: Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

I love this guy. I would probably never have tried Atkins if I had not seen one of Taubes' lectures. Wonder how long it will be before the world realises that Taubes, Atkins and our grandparents were all right. It's amazing when so many people get something so badly wrong.

[EmDee]

Re: Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories

I slogged thru Taubes's book and am glad I did but, man o man, I'm glad to hear he is coming out with a reader-friendly version...that was one hard read. In all good conscience, I cannot recommend the book to people I talk to about low-carb living because it is just too inaccessible.