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After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet Taubes' book is not a diet book, it's a thick book on all the things that are wrong o

by nova 17y ago

After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet Taubes' book is not a diet book, it's a thick book on all the things that are wrong on modern research on nutrition. It explains why the problem is not fats (nor greens), but refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour. Very worth your time, really.

lacrossegm 17y ago
American obsesity can correlated to eating too much salt, sugar and fat. Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda, coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring, preservatives, etc.) If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish and lean meat.
- jerf 17y ago
  Look, you just spouted the dietary dogma in the face of a book that has dozens upon dozens of references to scientific literature. The only thing stopping me saying "hundreds" is I'm not quite sure if it gets up to 200, though I bet it does. (I don't have it in front of me to check.) Even if you're completely right (which I do not believe despite being raised on that theory), simply re-spouting it is not an adequate response to this book. That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch up to modern science. Salt especially; current science strongly indicates that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science. Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty good.
  - lacrossegm 17y ago
    I was referring to concepts presented in "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite" by David Kessler. Of course, I wouldn't expect a lot of people on HN to agree, thus the down-votes. A lot of the food industry is based on pumping the salt, sugar and fat so that we eat/buy more. So people focused on making money are more likely to side with Taubes (even if he's wrong) than with Kessler. If I could down vote this thread, I would.
  - Psyonic 17y ago
    The funny thing is that Taubes book basically recommends you do away with those things anyway: who likes burgers without the bun? fries are out, shakes are out, tacos without the shell? no thanks, etc, etc. Where he differs, he has a lot more science to back it up.
    - lacrossegm 17y ago
      I'm not so sure about the science. This quote is taken from the wiki article on Gary Taubes "Although Taubes has no formal training in nutrition or medicine, his book was praised as "raising interesting and valuable points" by Dr. Andrew Weil, while Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Jillian Michaels who appeared on the same program disagreed with Taubes on many questions. [6]" I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an inefficient tool for weight loss. Taubes is against refined carbs (OK, that does make sense) but is a bit of a nutter on other causes and solutions to obesity.
      - Psyonic 17y ago
        Perhaps you're right. I'm definitely not qualified to say for certain, but it's something I'll look into.
      - nova 17y ago
        I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an inefficient tool for weight loss. The science of the book is sound. And he is right about exercise: it's good for fitness (as in muscle) and other health reasons, but for weight loss is almost useless by itself. The reason is insulin, which signal the body to store, not use, energy. Of course you could calorie-count people on a high carb diet and whip them to exercise and they will probably lose weight. But you will also destroy their health and they will regain all of its former weight (and then some) later. This is documented and is all in the book too.
- kowen 17y ago
  According to The Complete Meat Cookbook, meat has been bred to be a lot more lean in the past decades. I suspect that if we went back to the diet before there was fast-food, people would be eating more flavorful (a.k.a. fatty) meat than lean meat.
  - yish 17y ago
    Actually the notes indicate the opposite, that meat was more lean when it was free-range, hunted for and todays meat (grown in feed lots, etc) is much more fatty.
    - astrec 17y ago
      This is strikingly obvious - even in modern agriculture - when moving between countries with lots of grain fed beef (USA) and those with paddocks of grass fed beef (Australia, Argentina).

by nova 17y ago

lacrossegm 17y ago

American obsesity can correlated to eating too much salt, sugar and fat. Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda, coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring, preservatives, etc.) If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish and lean meat.

jerf 17y ago
Look, you just spouted the dietary dogma in the face of a book that has dozens upon dozens of references to scientific literature. The only thing stopping me saying "hundreds" is I'm not quite sure if it gets up to 200, though I bet it does. (I don't have it in front of me to check.) Even if you're completely right (which I do not believe despite being raised on that theory), simply re-spouting it is not an adequate response to this book. That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch up to modern science. Salt especially; current science strongly indicates that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science. Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty good.
- lacrossegm 17y ago
  I was referring to concepts presented in "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite" by David Kessler. Of course, I wouldn't expect a lot of people on HN to agree, thus the down-votes. A lot of the food industry is based on pumping the salt, sugar and fat so that we eat/buy more. So people focused on making money are more likely to side with Taubes (even if he's wrong) than with Kessler. If I could down vote this thread, I would.
- Psyonic 17y ago
  The funny thing is that Taubes book basically recommends you do away with those things anyway: who likes burgers without the bun? fries are out, shakes are out, tacos without the shell? no thanks, etc, etc. Where he differs, he has a lot more science to back it up.
  - lacrossegm 17y ago
    I'm not so sure about the science. This quote is taken from the wiki article on Gary Taubes "Although Taubes has no formal training in nutrition or medicine, his book was praised as "raising interesting and valuable points" by Dr. Andrew Weil, while Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Jillian Michaels who appeared on the same program disagreed with Taubes on many questions. [6]" I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an inefficient tool for weight loss. Taubes is against refined carbs (OK, that does make sense) but is a bit of a nutter on other causes and solutions to obesity.
    - Psyonic 17y ago
      Perhaps you're right. I'm definitely not qualified to say for certain, but it's something I'll look into.
    - nova 17y ago
      I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an inefficient tool for weight loss. The science of the book is sound. And he is right about exercise: it's good for fitness (as in muscle) and other health reasons, but for weight loss is almost useless by itself. The reason is insulin, which signal the body to store, not use, energy. Of course you could calorie-count people on a high carb diet and whip them to exercise and they will probably lose weight. But you will also destroy their health and they will regain all of its former weight (and then some) later. This is documented and is all in the book too.
kowen 17y ago
According to The Complete Meat Cookbook, meat has been bred to be a lot more lean in the past decades. I suspect that if we went back to the diet before there was fast-food, people would be eating more flavorful (a.k.a. fatty) meat than lean meat.
- yish 17y ago
  Actually the notes indicate the opposite, that meat was more lean when it was free-range, hunted for and todays meat (grown in feed lots, etc) is much more fatty.
  - astrec 17y ago
    This is strikingly obvious - even in modern agriculture - when moving between countries with lots of grain fed beef (USA) and those with paddocks of grass fed beef (Australia, Argentina).