Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes

The author of Good Calories, Bad Calories is strongly in the "carbs are bad" camp, however, he presents his argument with a fairly open mind. He believes there is adequate science out there to support the low-carb diets. However, it has been suppressed. 

There are multiple reasons for this suppression. There are some researchers that have received money from companies that pedal sugary food. This leads them to favor sugar (as opposed to fat.) There was also a loss of key German nutrition research after the world wars. Scientists have jumped to conclusions after limited studies. Then they have seen repetition of their initial hypothesis. Government policy was put in place before the science was settled. This advocacy for low-fat diets ended up biasing future work. Science disciplines are also very narrow and don't communicate well, limiting the view of what he sees as the obvious solution.

The criticisms of science are all valid. The advocacy for low-carb diet is also fairly convincing. However, with the thoroughness, you could easily advocate for just about any diet. He goes for the Occam's Razoer argument. Carbs are the simple solution, so they must be true. However, he also ties it with the argument for hormones and genetics. If it is our body that is controlling weight gain it why bother with what we eat? How is it that exercise doesn't matter?  

There are also challenges about grouping things together. Are all carbs bad? Are the groupings appropriate? What are the causes and effects? Do people really eat because they or predisposed to get fat?

Nutrition is complex. People have been getting fatter recently. Modern processed junk food seems closely correlated. But is it causation? Or is there an external factor? 

The book is a good exploration of low carb diets by a science writer. Will we ever have a solution to diet that maximizes health while also preserving the environment and economy?

The China Study, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health

Medecine is focussed reductionism:  finding impacts of isolated chemicals and magic pills to counteract them. It fails miserably at looking at the big pictures. I would love to go to the doctor and have them say "you should focus on changing this in your diet and do these exercises". However, it is most often "take this pill and lets run a test".

China Study advocates a "focus on the big picture" approach. We should look at our entire diet. Studies that focus on individual chemicals miss the big picture of how our body interacts with all the different components of food products. A plant-based diet seems to be the best way to get the nutrition needed. The typical American diet includes heavily processed foods with a great deal of animal products. Attempts to "improve" it are often based on more processing and reducing some bad component (like fat) or adding some good component (like vitamins). This often misses the big picture.

I really wanted to agree with the book, but I had trouble with some of the process and conclusions. The very title of "China Study" felt odd. The Chinese diet that I have known is very heavy on meat. It does tend to be a "whole animal" meat, but I have rarely seen a Chinese diet where meat does not play a significant role. How did they come up with the benefits of a plant-based diet from this?

The book also spends time berating the competition. The "nurses study" looked at people following a typical American diet. It would be unable to find the benefit of a plant based diet. Other doctors and  societies were also going out of their way to discredit the "nutrition" approaches to health care. Are we just hearing one side of the story? It seems the authors have jumped on the "all animal products are bad" bandwagon and may be unwilling to credit a study that shows some benefits. This is somewhat similar to the other studies showing "inconclusiveness" about plant-diet benefits.

Things did get better when the authors analyzed the problem with science and medicine today. There are many people that depend on the current approach for their livelihoods. If we suddenly upended the reductionist "pill" model to health-care, thousands of well-paying jobs will go away. Our pharmaceutical and medical approach is built on the assumption that there a number of small little knobs that can be turned to get the desired result. A single knob is thought of as a possible fix to health. However, only gradually is science realizing that we may need to turn hundreds or thousands of different knobs together to get what we need. Nature has already done some of this for us. Alas, as we have sought to "optimize" we have focussed on a few at the expense of others. Will we be able to fix our understanding before it is too late?

What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health

Reducing food down to carbs, fats and protein misses out on a lot of the key nutritional value. There are many micronutrients that have value that we have yet to understand. Even isolating these misses out on the benefits of the interrelation between various compounds. People have had centuries to select food for nutritional value. 

We have spent a few decades tearing food apart and attempting to provide similar benefit. Alas, we have not done a good job. Taste has previously been a key way to identify food our bodies need. However, as scientists have been able to isolate key macronutrients, they were left with bland food. No problem, they added plenty of flavors to help fool us into liking the "fake" food. Even "natural" food suffers from the same problems. Agriculture has engineered crops for yield rather than taste or nutrition. Fields are covered with fertilizer that makes plants grow fast. They have little time for defenses, thus they are covered with pesticides. This kills off the pest predators also, requiring more pesticides. 

Meat has suffered from similar problems. Livestock are fed grains that are cheap rather than nutritious. This "food" needs to be flavored to get the animals to appropriate consume it. The animals quickly put on weight, but the nutritional value and taste of the meat is lacking. (Argentine grass-fed beef tasted so much better than the feed-lot American beef.) There are also the externalities. Animal waste is great fertilizer on farms, but hazardous waste on a feedlot.

The explores the decline in nutrition in modern food with a goal towards advocating no-till "natural" agricultural processes. Many of today's crops don't work as well in organic, no-till farming because they have been bred specifically for high-fertilizer, conventional farming. Breeding for taste and more natural conditions can produce more nutritious, better tasting produce with yields almost as high as bland conventional ones. We are only beginning to better understand the nutritional benefits. (Nutritional studies remain hard because there are so many different people and different interrelated nutrients.) 

The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat

Fat is bad. Gluten is bad. Sugar is bad. MSG is bad. Every day we seem to see a story about some food that is "bad". We are encouraged to avoid it. Or perhaps we are encouraged to adopt a diet like Paleo, Vegan, Gluten free or something else. These often have advocates. There are people that have success with them. There are also people that do not.

Gluten is an interesting case. Some people do have celiac disease. For them, gluten is very bad. However, for most other people it is not. Earlier, a banana diet was seen as a cure for celiac disease. It worked - because it eliminated gluten as a side effect. However, once the banana relation was removed, low-gluten diets faded. This left gluten out of our minds eye. As gluten has roared back, it has helped people with undiagnosed celiac. However, it has hurt many other people that have adopted low gluten diets that do not benefit them.

Isolated studies often get great publicity. There may be advocates that repeat the findings in the media. This gives the impression that it is commonly accepted - even if there is little scientific basis. People end up yo-yoing around trying to find the latest fad. They may actually feel bad due to a placebo (or nocebo) effect. This distracts as from the important behaviors that will improve health. The villain keeps changing. Sugar and salt each get coverage. Some extreme diets (such as the rice diet) were also covered. 

In the end, he makes a "diet" suggestion. The first is to just not diet. Detox by avoiding reading anything about nutrition for a month. Focus on eating food you like. Don't keep track of it. But, spend time to eat. Devote time to sit down and eat. Don't do any activity while eating (expect perhaps talking to others.) Enjoy varied cuisines. This all seemed good.

Then he went off the deep end. He declared packaging and plastics to be a source of most of our problems. We have become fatter, even after eating "healthy" in various ways. So it must be all the plastics. After all, people would use glass jars previously. At first I thought this was tongue and cheek. However, it did feel real. He trained me in the previous chapters to question studies - especially when they advocated a quick fix. Now he was advocated a quick fix. What? 

What should we do? Eat a variety of food. Don't expect any food to be a panacea. Look for bias in studies. Everyone can have an opinion. There may also be bias in what is thought to be "good". (For example, a study looked at sedentary behavior watching TV and playing video games, but not reading. Aren't they all just as sedentary?) Even the author showed biases in how he reported about biases. When it comes to eating, it is best to eat food you enjoy, but not too much of it. If it makes you sick, you probably should not eat it.

Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat

Resetting the Table takes a very science-based approach to looking at the pros and cons of the current food production system. It provides an objective look at the food chain without being excessively biased towards one point of view. The general conclusion is that our farming system is extremely efficient, but still has room for improvement. 

Farmers want to use as few inputs as possible. They want to continue to farm in a sustainable manner. However, they also want to maximize their yield. Large farms can take advantage of new technology that small farms do not have the scale to use. Drones, computers and satellites can all be used to help target water, fertilizer and pesticides where it is precisely needed. No till farming has proving to be a valuable "old school" way of improving farming productivity.

The science behind GMO crops is interesting. Scientific studies have overwhelmingly shown GMO crops to be safe. Activists, however, have continued to use fear an uncertainty to fight against GMOs. (The same activists will often be on the opposite side of the debate when it comes to climate change.) This anti-GMO work has led to developing companies refusing GMO crops that could be beneficial.

The author comes across as somewhat ambivalent when it comes to organic agriculture. The arbitrary nature of the rules is not necessarily best for the environment. (For example, non-biodegradable plastic is used due to restriction on other products.) For animal products, it gets even more hazy. Producers can often meet the "letter of the law" for animal welfare, without providing significant benefit. The biggest concern with organic farming is the scale. It is predominantly niche right now. Organic farming also tends to produce lower yields per acre and require more labor. There is probably not enough land available to feed the world with fully organic farming.

Eating local can also have issues. Shipping produce across the world is done in bulk and requires relatively little fuel. A farmer trucking his produce 60 miles from the farm to the farmer's market uses much more fuel per unit. The consumer, driving 5 miles to buy a few pounds of produce uses even more fuel per unit. The "local" produce can often burn more fossil fuel in transit than the long-distance produce, and this doesn't even touch the production. The distant area may be a much better location for growing certain crops. Our global supply chain has allowed us to consume more healthy foods that would not be otherwise available.

The greatest criticism is leveled at the food processors. They focus on getting people to buy more. This can be detrimental to health as well as the environment. Farmers can often receive a bad rap as they align with these processors in fighting against regulation. However, many of these regulations (such as nutrition standards) could be either neutral or positive for farmers.

What does the future hold? The green revolution has improved productivity. However, everything is not perfect. The increased productivity has enabled our current urbanized society. There have been some cases of widespread "turning back", such as Cuba after the loss of USSR support. The country was able to move towards "local organic farming" out of necessity. However, this was accompanied by a loss of productivity. At the present, it would be near impossible to "go back" to classical agriculture. However, there are still areas for improvement. We should focus on improving without throwing out the benefits.

Sugar: The World Corrupted: From Slavery to Obesity

Easy access to sugar was once limited to the upper class. However, with new world sugar plantations and alternative sugar sources (such as sugar beets), it has become well used by all classes of people. This has lead to multiple public health issues. The author begins with the story of his World War II upbringing. Despite rationing, sugar was a regular part of everyday life. Many people would have their teeth removed at a young age. It was cheaper to have fake teeth then to maintain them in face of abundant sugar consumption.
The author then goes on to show how slavery was rooted in the need for sugar. He does have some good points. He seems to push it a little too for, however has some basis in reality. Would slavery been so important for cotton if it were not already in place for sugar? What would land be like without sugar terraforming?
Now I have second thoughts about pure cane sugar.

Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

The American "Health Care" system tends to be more of a "disease management system". Most of the focus is on treating adverse symptoms. This works great in responding to acute issues (such as a broken arm or a heart attack.) However, it does a horrible job of preventing chronic conditions (including those that lead up to heart attacks.) There is plenty of information "out there", but much of it tends to be misleading or contradictory. (Some chemical in one food reduces heart attack risk, but another in the same food increases risk of diabetes.)

The processed food industry simply retools their recipes in response to the latest research. Coconut oil is bad? Ok, lets add partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Trans fats are bads? Ok, lets retool with another fat and add some new chemicals to maintain the taste and stability. The product appears healthier in the day, but people do not seem to do much better. Luckily, the pharmaceutical industry is here to offer us a pill to help counter our new chronic condition. Unfortunately, the pill comes with some side effects. Luckily there is a pill that can treat that. And now we are committed.

Why do we have to take so much effort to make the chronic symptoms go away? Why can't we just find a cure that makes the condition go away? The authors of Whole argue that we can find the natural solution - and it involves nothing more than eating a balanced diet based on whole, planted-based foods. The volume of of "chemical compounds" consumed in our food far outweighs that in pills. Why can't it help us? The book argues that it does. However, "reductionist science" tends to looks for isolated chemicals, rather than consider the impact of everything together. As an example, a food like an apple has many nutrients that work together. While it has a small amount of vitamin C, consuming an apple make more available than a supplement with much more of the vitamin. The many other components of the apple work together to provide the overall nutritive benefit. Our current science paradigm focuses on isolating individual components and using these as supplements or drugs. While this does have some value. A much better solution would be to look at the whole. (But, alas, an apple a day may just keep the doctor away.)

I agree whole-heatedly with the anti-reductionist argument. Science is stuck is this "evidence-based" reductionist paradigm that makes it difficult to understand the "entire human". Food produces love to give us quick, tasty food without really caring about the long term impact. There are billions of dollars in the industry. Stopping it all would wreck havoc on the economy. But, is the alternative better? Avoiding heavily processed foods would almost certainly improve health. But what about convenience? Our current society does not assign culpability for diseases, thus further encouraging the bad behavior. Why not get the cheap, easy food and drive our car and watch TV. The diseases we get our just "natural accidents". Medicine will help find a cure. What if instead we really focused on health. Don't waste the money researching pills to cure the lazy, when all they really need is broccoli and a bicycle. Instead focus the efforts on better understanding what people need to do to improve their overall health and identifying the true toxins that can be eliminated from the environment.

As for the diet suggested, more holistic research would be useful. Here, a low fat, vegetarian diet seems healthy. In Big Fat Surprise, a high protein, high fat diet was found better. In both cases, however, the foods tended to be "whole", with minimal processed food. It seems clear that processed food is the bad guy. Listings of "micro-nutrients" and and fortified foods only seem to mislead us. The good guys may come in many forms. Alas, they don't have a huge lobby.

Food Rules

I like Michael Pollan's books. However, I can't seem to tell them apart - except for this one. This is a "sound bite" version of his popular Defense of Food book. He narrows food choices down to a set of around 60 short "rules", some with a couple additional paragraphs, others with nothing more than the rule.

They all describe general approaches to "natural" healthy eating. Some rules include "only eat deserts you make yourself", "don't buy food you see advertised on TV", "don't buy food that makes health claims" or "don't eat something that was served through a car window." The main message is similar to the "real" book: go back to natural food that can be "enjoyed", rather than processed food that is consumed. The message is good. The presentation is extremely brief. I guess its a good way to cash in on a popular book that happens to gel with the cultural zeitgeist.