Thomas Ray's Reviews > Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease

Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes, 2007, 601 pages, Dewey 613.283 T191g, ISBN 9781400040780

PHYSIOLOGY (p. 454 sums up)

When we eat fats, they break down into fatty acids that circulate in the blood; the body's cells burn them for fuel.

When we eat carbohydrates, they break down to glucose, triggering the release of insulin into our blood. The fatty acids are whisked into fat cells, sequestered as triglycerides (three fatty acids on a backbone of glycerol phosphate, provided by the carbohydrates). Insulin prompts muscle cells to use the glucose as fuel.

If too much insulin stays in our blood too long, our cells become desensitized to it.

If muscle cells are desensitized to insulin, they don't burn the glucose.

If fat cells are still sensitized to insulin, they still sequester fatty acids.

In this condition, the cells aren't getting fuel they can use, to maintain their functions. Cell activity slows. The person is lethargic. And hungry. p. 445.

Eating more carbohydrates increases blood sugar the cells aren't using. Eating more fats sequesters them in fat cells.

Limiting our food makes us lethargic. Working more makes us hungry. Neither diet nor exercise loses weight long term. pp. 299, 304.

Constant-weight people burn more calories when they eat more. Fatten-easily people instead store the excess as fat. p. 301. Excess protein partly burns off. p. 302.

High blood sugar damages blood vessels.

Avoiding carbohydrates will lower insulin levels, enabling release of fatty acids from fat cells.

Rats rendered diabetic voluntarily choose diets devoid of carbohydrates, consuming only protein and fat. Their blood sugar fell to normal, they ate less food and drank only normal amounts of water. p. 430.

FRUCTOSE

Fructose all goes to the liver, which transforms it into triglycerides. This promotes insulin resistance. p. 200. It is also particularly prone to forming clumps with proteins, promoting vascular diseases. p. 201.

Eating fatty steak, lard, and bacon, instead of bread, potatoes, and noodles, would reduce heart-disease risk, though virtually no nutritional authority will say so publicly. p. 169.

Without carbohydrates you cannot gain weight. p. 410. Kuo put his patients on a sugar-free diet, with only 500-600 starch calories a day. 1967. p. 159. U.S. Navy physicians prescribed an 800- to 1000-calorie "ketogenic" diet of 70% fat, 20% protein, 10% carbohydrate to fat seamen. All lost weight without hunger, while higher-carb diets had left them hungry. p. 407.

A young rat, restricted for the rest of its life to two-thirds its preferred diet, will likely live 30% to 50% longer than had we let it eat to satiation, and age-related diseases will be delayed in their onset and slowed in their progression. p. 218.

By the year 2000, Americans were eating 150 pounds of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup a year. pp. 116, 199, 456. And 200 lb. of flour and grain, 130 lb. of potatoes, 27 lb. of corn. p. 458.

Sugar is addictive. p. 446.

By the mid-1960s, four facts had been established beyond reasonable doubt: (1) carbohydrates are singularly responsible for prompting insulin secretion; (2) insulin is singularly responsible for inducing fat accumulation; (3) dietary carbohydrates are required for excess fat accumulation; (4) both Type 2 diabetics and fat people have high levels of circulating insulin and an exaggerated insulin response to carbohydrates in the diet. p. 394.

Insulin inhibits the release of fat from fat cells. p. 426.

VEGETABLES' CARBOHYDRATE CONTENT

Potatoes 20% (80% water)
Peas, artichokes 15%
Onions, carrots, beets, okra 10%
Lettuce, cucumber, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, kale 5%
p. 314

MISSING

Missing is any mention of the positive effects of physical activity on metabolism. Frequent intense prolonged exercise may enable a type-2 diabetic to control his blood sugar. Taubes doesn't say so. After a long day of hard work, you may need to eat carbs right away, to restore your glycogen reserves. Taubes doesn't say it.

Taubes' advice is for the many of us who are largely-to-completely sedentary, and have been eating more carbs than are good for us.

THE FOCUS

The focus of the book is on calling out the junk science and dogmatism behind authorities' advocacy of high-carb diets--often even for diabetics.

Those who /know/ what the answer is lack the motivation to continue looking for it. p. 377.

REFERENCES

/Not by Bread Alone/, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1946. Fat-and-protein diets, such as the traditional Inuit diet. The Inuit, and the European explorers and traders who shared their plant-free diet, were perfectly healthy, as were the author and an associate who replicated the diet for over a year on return to Europe. They didn't even get scurvy. The all-meat diet provides enough of all the vitamins, /if/ the person doesn't eat carbohydrates. Insulin competes with the vitamins for receptors on cells. In the presence of insulin, a person's need for vitamins is much higher. pp. 320, 324, 328.

Ketone bodies, glycerol, and protein-derived glucose suffice to fuel the brain. p. 456.

/Obesity and Leanness/, Hugo Romy, 1940, is easily the most thoughtful analysis ever written in English on weight regulation in humans. p. 294. "Children do not grow because they eat voraciously. They eat voraciously because they are growing. For every calorie stored as fat or lean tissue, the body will require that an extra calorie be consumed or conserved." pp. 294-295.

/Handbook of Physiology/, American Physiological Society, 1965: 800 page volume dedicated to the latest research on fat metabolism. Albert Renold, coeditor. p. 386.

Edgar S. Gordon, 1969, The Metabolic Importance of Obesity, in Symposium on Foods: Carbohydrates and their roles, ed. H.W. Schultz (pp 322-346). pp. 388, 529.

Edgar S. Gordon, "A New Concept in the Treatment of Obesity," JAMA, Oct. 5, 1963, 186:50-60. Low-carb. p. 412.