Gary Taubes’ office is strewn with books on nutrition. “The Paleo Diet.” Atkins. “The Politics of Food.” He’s read them all.
Taubes is the author of two books on health, a former lecturer at UC Berkeley and a leading science journalist whose 2002 New York Times Magazine article on what he calls “the myth of the low-fat diet” became the talk of the nutrition community.
His controversial views have led him to be hailed as one of the nation’s most progressive thinkers on diet and nutrition — and also one of the most radical.
Now Taubes, who ended his tenure as a lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in August, has launched a new initiative to compel scientists and health officials to re-examine the nutrition guidelines that have shaped American dinners for generations.
Rather than the low-fat diet plans championed by many celebrities and fitness experts, Taubes maintains that obesity is not a matter of how much one eats but what one eats. For more than 10 years, Taubes has argued that complex carbs — not fat — are fundamentally to blame for America’s obesity crisis and that anyone who tells you otherwise is practicing faulty science.
Specifically, he argues that an individual’s accumulation of fat is mostly a result of the body’s production of the hormone insulin.
“Insulin levels are mostly determined by … the quantity and quality of the carbs we consume,” Taubes said. “If you want to get the fat out and burn it for fuel, the first thing you have to do is lower insulin levels, and you do that by removing these carbohydrates from the diet.”
Thus, for Taubes, it is not simply a matter of calories in versus calories out that is to blame for the nation’s obesity crisis but which calories are going into the body in the first place.
What began as a decade-long obsession with health has since grown into a full-fledged career. Taubes lectured on various health misconceptions at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health during the 2011-12 school year and is currently working on his third book, on controversies surrounding sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.
What he calls his “insurgency” for revised nutrition guidelines and greater public awareness has led him to his newest project, the nonprofit Nutrition Science Initiative, which was launched in September. NuSI aims to fund studies that examine the fundamental causes of obesity rather than just the best ways to lose weight, as much of research on nutrition has focused on. Taubes hopes the initiative will spur the scientific community to re-examine some long-held beliefs on health that predate modern research methods and findings.
“There may be other nonprofits that share our mission, but they are trying to accomplish that by reiterating the same mantra,” said Peter Attia, co-founder of the initiative. “Those are noble desires, but our point is that if any of that stuff works, why hasn’t it worked for 40 years?”
Ronald Krauss, a senior scientist in the Life Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in an email that while he agrees that current American nutritional guidelines need to be updated, he is not quite convinced about the premise of Taubes’ and Attia’s argument.
“As I understand (Taubes’) views, they include the notion that not all calories are equal when it comes to body weight regulation, and that carbohydrates, by triggering insulin release, promote a greater increase in body fat than fat or protein,” Krauss said in the email. “My feeling is that the factors leading to development and maintenance of obesity are highly complex, and cannot be reduced to this single mechanism.”
Taubes and Attia are looking to fund studies by researchers like Krauss who are critical of their claims.
“We want skeptics,” Taubes said. “Whatever they find will be seen as credible.”
NuSI is looking for scientists “who agree with the highest premise that the scientific evidence underpinning our dietary recommendations need to be revisited,” Attia said.
“NuSI stands unique in this position,” he added. “We’re the only ones saying that we need to go back to the drawing board — you need to understand how gravity works before you can build a bridge.”
Sara Grossman is the lead research and ideas reporter. Contact her at [email protected].
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Studies have shown over and over again that macro content doesn’t change the body’s propensity to store/burn off fat nearly enough to overtake calorie-in vs. calorie-out. A basal metabolic calorie diet of the sugars that Taubes describes as unhealthy, let’s say 2000 calories worth, would be burned off at the end same as 2k calories from any other “healthy” diet. If Taubes argues that the type of macros one takes in is more important than simple calorie measures, then there should be at least a few reputable studies (repeated multiple times) that cite such a dramatic change in the body’s metabolic rate. A claim such as this deserves more than speculation, especially considering even the biological field doesn’t fully understand how the body’s metabolism changes with variable macro/micro intake.
The only reason this is even a debate is because it’s easy to overeat on simple carbs. Protein and fats are far more satiating, and eating more than your basal metabolic rate on a carb-free diet is a lot harder than on a carb-rich diet.
Actually a recent study has been conducted that tends to show that
metabolism is increased by avoiding refined carbohydrates.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154
Now
switch the questions around. Where are the studies that show a calorie
is simply a calorie and that metabolism is not affected? Where are the
studies that show long term eating of carbohydrates is healthier than
eating fat? The Seven Countries study by Keys cherrypicked countries
to include. The Oslo Diet Heart Study didn’t take into account
confounding factors like the amount of carbohydrates. The more recent
China Study is makes interpretations not supported by its own dataset
among other flaws.
Note also that during the time the lowfat
craze was in the ascendant the American Heart Association has had to
repeatedly reverse and backtrack. The AHA’s “prudent diet” was inferior
to the Mediterranean Diet which did not lower total fats. So the
emphasis was put on lowering saturated fats and trans fats (which by the
way increased because of the demonization of saturated fats). Now it’s
turning out saturated fats may not be bad.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824150/
Ever since
the studies attempting to debunk the Atkins diet failed miserably and
showed the Atkins producing better overall results in pretty much all
cases, nothing but a litany of excuses has been heard from the
authorities.
Here’s a blog post that talks about increased energy output with increased energy input: http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2012/07/14-percent-advantage-of-eating-little.html
Energy input and output are coupled. They cannot be magically decoupled. Hence it’s not speculation that to increase energy output, one may have to increase energy input, and vice versa. If anything is speculative, it’s the idea of “basal metabolic rate.” How do you measure that with any precision?
Finally, the body doesn’t burn “calories.” It burns ATP. The substrates for ATP are glucose, fatty acids, or proteins that act like either glucose or fatty acids.
I have read one of Taube’s books, and it seemed to have a number of studies that supported his position. However, I am sure he would be happy to have you send him all the studies that you are referring to.
…”For more than 10 years, Taubes has argued that complex carbs — not fat —
are fundamentally to blame for America’s obesity crisis and that anyone
who tells you otherwise is practicing faulty science.”
I think you’re misstating this. It’s not complex carbs he is concerned about, it’s refined carbs like white bread and pasta.
Interesting caution about wheat:
http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2012/10/01/cardiologist-modern-wheat-chronic-poison/
Please watch “Forks Over Knives” for FREE to learn about the implications of a meat-based diet vs a plant-based diet. Go to http://www.hulu.com/watch/279734 and do yourself and your family a favor!
Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/
Joel Fuhrman MD on Live! with Kelly
7 minutes of life altering information!
http://tinyurl.com/JoelFuhrmanMDonLiveWithKelly
Just a note to anyone reading Jim’s comments- Forks over Knives is based on cherry picked BS vegan agenda science. The majority of Vegans are shown to be deficient in several essential nutrients (fact, especially b12) and are often anemic as well as depressed from lack of fat consumption. Eating a plant based diet will cause a slurry of health problems, it will lower your HDL (good cholesterol), frankly from a scientific standpoint, Veganism is one of the last things one would recommend (that is if you have some form of objectivity, of course if you’re a vegan like Jim you’ll proselytize veganism.)
I will not be recommending any particular diet, I will however state that removing meat is not a good idea. Removing dairy however is not a bad thing. Raw grass fed dairy or high fat pasteurized dairy (cream) still has nutritional benefits which outweigh the detriments of consuming dairy.
Here is what I eat:
Pastured eggs, Grass fed Beef & Lamb, Wild low mercury fish, Raw grass fed milk, White rice (not brown, has been shown to hinder protein absorption in men), Veggies, Sweet potatoes, Berries, very few (if any) fruits, good coffee, some supplements, nuts, coconut oil, olive oil, vinegar, Dark chocolate (90%-99%), etc.
What I avoid: Refined flours, sugars, fruit juices, corn, soy, vegetable oils, pasteurized dairy, commercial (grain fed) meats, non-pastured chickens/eggs, etc.
Prior to changing to this diet, I ate a normal diet, weighed 315 pounds with high blood pressure and low HDL/high LDL (the bad kind of LDL, high triglycerides as well.)
Changed to this diet about 18 months ago, my HDL has gone up 12 points, Triglycerides have gone down exponentially (from high 300′s to low 100′s, sprinting helped this.) I have also lost 86 pounds so far, with very little exercise (HIIT once a week, weight training once a week.) Body fat content has dropped from around 41% to 28%.
When I went vegan for a year, I lost 20 pounds but my fat content increased despite working out more often, muscle mass dropped, I felt weak and I became depressed. My then girlfriend who was also vegan became anemic and vitamin deficient.
Avoid this religion of veganism if you value your health, what you eat beyond that is totally up to you, but if you stop eating meat, dairy and eggs – you will damage yourself.
The China Study is the most comprehensive study of diet,
lifestyle and disease ever done with humans in the history of biomedical
research. It was an enormous undertaking jointly arranged through Cornell University,
Oxford University
and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The New
York Times called it the “Grand Prix of Epidemiology.” This project surveyed a
vast range of diseases, diet and lifestyle factors in rural China and it eventually
produced more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between various
dietary factors and disease!