The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Good Calories, Good Science
or Bad Calories, Bad Science?

by Barry Rein

There is little doubt that the United States, along with much of the rest of the world, is in the midst of an epidemic of obesity. As we get fatter, the diseases associated with obesity — diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer — continue to rise. Despite the fact that we are constantly exhorted to eat less and exercise more, we continue to get fatter. A neutral observer might conclude that there is something wrong with the science here. Gary Taubes claims to be one such observer, and he’s convinced that there is definitely something wrong with the science of nutrition as it is being practiced today.

The central thesis of Taubes’ new book, Why We Get Fat is that carbohydrates in our diet is the cause of this epidemic. While his thesis is unquestionably controversial, Taubes builds a strong scientific case that this is indeed what is happening. If he is right — and his work has the ring of scientific truth about it — it means that much of the dietary advice we have been following is flat-out wrong.

This book reviews much of the same ground that his previous work, Good Calories, Bad Calories covered. That work was nearly five hundred pages of densely-written, heavily annotated scientific prose. Unsurprisingly, many readers found it to be hard going as it was aimed at a scientifically-oriented audience. One of Taubes’ aims in Why We Get Fat is to cover the same ground but, as he says in the introduction, in a form that husbands, wives, parents, or friends and siblings can read without difficulty.

Gary Taubes is no neophyte in writing about scientific controversies. Before he turned his attention to dietary science, Taubes wrote about physics, such as the highly acclaimed Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, about Pons, Fleischman, and the problems that ensue from announcing a major scientific discovery by press conference before anyone has a chance to replicate your findings; and also Nobel Dreams, a critical look at Carlo Rubbia and the harm to science in general and to a scientific career in particular that can result from the pursuit of the Nobel Prize. For such work Taubes won the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers three times. He is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. So Taubes’ bona fides as a researcher and writer are impeccable. But is his science?

Why We Get Fat is divided into two major sections. The first, Biology, not Physics, is generally a debunking section that endeavors to break down much of what we think we know about getting fat. Among other themes, it explains why the calories-in/calories-out hypothesis is false. The second section, Adiposity 101, clarifies the science behind fat accumulation, and comes up with some startling, but well-supported conclusions as to why we’re really getting fat. […]

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