Gina Kolata on “Good Calories, Bad Calories”

Gary Taubes new 600 page book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease," was a long time coming, and a lot of contrarian health experts are no doubt rejoicing its arrival. In this book review in the New York Times, Gina Kolata opines that "Taubes convincingly shows that much of what is believed about nutrition
and health is based on the flimsiest science. To cite one minor
example, there’s the notion that a tiny bit of extra food, 50 or 100
calories a day — a few bites of a hamburger, say — can gradually make
you fat, and that eating a tiny bit less each day, or doing something
as simple as walking a mile, can make the weight slowly disappear. This
idea is based on a hypothesis put forth in a single scientific paper,
published in 2003. And e
ven then it was qualified, Taubes reports, by
the statement that it was “theoretical and involves several
assumptions” and that it “remains to be empirically tested.”
Nonetheless, it has now become the basis for an official federal
recommendation for obesity prevention." Read Kolata’s review here. Buy the book from Amazon.com here.