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Lowcarbarama is a gathering place for links and pointers to all sort of things relevant to low-carb: articles, blogs, interviews, Web sites, forums. It's a place for commentary on health and nutrition in public policy, the sciences and the media. Comments are welcome anytime, regardless of the post's date.


Thursday, December 13, 2007

Gary Taubes and the Big Fat Lies

In 2002, award-winning science journalist Gary Taubes wrote an article that appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, titled "What if it's all been a big fat lie?" In it, he questioned the hypotheses that eating a diet low in fat was helpful for weight loss, or in fact, healthy at all. He discussed an alternative hypothesis, which had recently been revived by Dr. Robert Atkins with his New Diet Revolution, and was then gaining in popularity, at least among American dieters: that restricting carbohydrate was more effective -- and more healthful -- than restricting fat, or even total calories. He made much mention of "Endocrinology 101": insulin is used to store fat, and eating carbohydrate causes the body to secrete insulin. This article led to the book deal that made possible Taubes's 2007 masterpiece, "Good Calories, Bad Calories."

Shortly before, Taubes had written an article for Science magazine, The soft science of dietary fat, that covered some of the same ground.

Here are links to these seminal articles, and as many of the published responses to them as I can find. If you know of more, please let me know via the comments field.

The soft science of dietary fat
(Click here to view as pdf)
by Gary Taubes
Science magazine, March 30, 2001

What if it's all been a big fat lie?
by Gary Taubes
New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2002

Big Fat Fake: The Atkins diet controversy and the sorry state of science journalism.
 by Michael Fumento
Reason magazine, March 2003


An exercise in vitriol rather than sound journalism
by Gary Taubes
Reason online, March 2003


Gary Taubes tries to overwhelm the reader with sheer verbiage
By Michael Fumento
Reason online, March 2003

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice blog! it's great to have all this Taubes stuff collected in one place. Gobs of Taubes, as Jimmy Moore puts it.

Thanks for doing this!

Art D.

lowcarbarama said...

Gobs of Taubes! I love it! I think he pronounces it to rhyme with "How now, brown cow," though. That's how Joy Behar pronounced it on the Larry King Live show. Which reminds me that I need to link to YouTube from that.

I love Gobs of Taubes anyway.

Thanks for visiting, Art D.!