Taubes - Chapter 02 - Elusive Benefits of Undereating - POSTED ON: Jan 01, 2011
In this chapter, Taubes’ focus is on “the elusive benefits of undereating”. and says:
“Of all the reasons to question the idea that overeating causes obesity, the most obvious has always been the fact that undereating doesn’t cure it.”
The chapter begins with a research project started in the early 1990s. Twenty thousand women were told to eat a low-fat diet, with lots of fruits, veggies and fiber, and received regular counseling to help them stay on the diet.
They weren’t told to eat less, but they ate 360 less calories a day which was about 20% less than the charts gave as their daily weight-maintenance requirement. But, after 8 years of this, the women lost only an average of 2 pounds each, and their waist measurements increased, suggesting that they lost muscle, not fat.
Taubes quotes some Experts who in 1959 studied all the medical literature for research results on dieting and found those results were
“remarkably similar and remarkably poor”.
A 2007 review analyzed all the diet trials since 1980 and found the same thing. Taubes says that the reality of this doesn’t keep Authorities from recommending that people undereat to lose weight. He quotes from medical textbooks that say..
”Dietary therapy remains the cornerstone of treatment, and the reduction of energy intake continues to be the basis of successful weight reduction program...
Taubes - Chapter 01 - Why Were They Fat? - POSTED ON: Jan 01, 2011
This Chapter is filled with Examples that refute the Theory that it is our "improved prosperity" or "toxic environment" that has created the obesity epidemic.
Taubes says facts show that being fat is often associated with poverty rather than merely with prosperity. Examples of connections to poverty, obesity, and high carbohydrates are:
Pima Indians in Arizona Sioux Indians, in South Dakota 1951 Naples, Italy 1959 Charleston, So Carolina 1960 Durban, So Africa 1961 Naura, the South Pacific 1961-63 Trinidad, West Indies 1963 Chili 1964-65 Johannesburg, So Africa 1965 Cherokee Indians in No Carolina 1969 Ghana, West Africa 1970 Lagos, Nigera 1971 Rarotonga, the South Pacific 1974 Kingston, Jamica 1974 Chili (again) 1978 Native American Tribes in Oklahoma 1981-83 Mexican Americans in Starr County, Texas
In all of these studies, a large percentage of these populations were poor, many were physically active doing manual labor, but were also fat.
2005 New England Journal of Medicine article by Benjamin Caballero, at Johns Hopkins University tells of his experience in Brazil, of seeing starving children together with their fat mothers.
Taubes points out that this poses a challenge to the current "conventional wisdom
"If we believe the mothers were fat because they ate too much, and we know their children are thin and stunted because they're not getting enough food,
we're assuming that the mothers' were willing to starve their children so they could overeat.
This goes against everything we know about maternal behavior."
Taubes - az - Introduction: The Original Sin - POSTED ON: Jan 01, 2011
Taubes says that Conventional Wisdom is handicapped with a "flawed belief system" which insists that
"We get fat because we eat too much and/or move too little, and so the cure is to do the opposite."
This is the "energy balance" paradigm which is also known as "calories-in/calories-out.
I agree with Taubes when he says:
"this way of thinking about our weight is so compelling and pervasive that it is virtually impossible nowadays NOT to believe it." "Imagine a murder trial in which one credible witness after another takes the stand and testifies that the subject was elsewhere at the time of the killing and so had an airtight alibi, and yet the jurors keep insisting that the defendant is guilty because that's what they believed when the trial began."
Taubes says that this "flawed belief" is the "original sin", and says
"we're never going to solve our own weight problems, let alone the societal problem of obesity and diabetes and the diseases that accompany them until we understand this and correct it."
He goes on to say
“the science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one -- specif...
Taubes - Author's Note - POSTED ON: Jan 01, 2011
Good Calories Bad Calories was a lengthy book. Dense with science, historical content and annotations. Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It is shorter, a book that doesn't require such an investment of time and effort.
Taubes says:
"I offer here the arguments against the conventional wisdom distilled down to their essence."
He goes on:
“My one request is that you think critically while you’re reading. I want you to keep asking yourself as you read whether what I’m saying really makes sense. To steal a phrase from Michael Pollan, this book is intended to be a thinker’s manifesto. Its goal is to refute some of the misconceptions that pass for public-health and medical advice in this country and around the world, and to arm you with the necessary information and logic to take your health and well-being into your own hands.”
So, I’m beginning with a comment about reading the book.
People are full of opinions which have been formed by their exposure to information and personal experience. Everyone who starts a new book brings those opinions with them,
To be open-minded, doesn’t mean we have no opinions. People who are open to learn new things are faced with the task of recognizing their own biases and then mentally working to put those opinions aside, while they read and assimilate new ...
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