Posted: Mar 11, 2011 12:35 pm
GT2211 wrote:I read about this book on Science Based Medicine a while back while searching for something else. I really have nothing to add since I have no real knowledge on the subject...but I will post a link if anyone is interested.
Why We Get Fat
Back to popcorn for me....
More bullshit from people who should know better.
I think Taubes, the author of the book we are discussing above, and the one that review wishes to discredit, is losing people as well because he is not making it clear enough who he is talking about-the people who don't do well on carb-rich diets. Plus I think he should stick to checking science's work and giving it a grade, and not try to replace it. Any of us that did that would be getting in over our heads, Taubes included.
He says it right away in his appearance on the Dr Oz show. He is writing to people that don't do well on carbs (insulin resistant, or potentially insulin resistant) I read the book too and my first criticism of his writing was that this was not clear enough. A casual scan of the debate he is stirring up leads you to think that he is talking about everyone.
I'm pretty sure he is in this group himself, and did well on Atkins. Then he spent 10 years researching why it worked, where diet advice came from, what medical people believe and why. He (actually he and the research team he hired) found a lot of things wrong.
Of course the so-called "science based" folks are going to be pissed off. He just checked their work and gave it a bad grade!
Let's face it, if advice that came from experts was good, everyone would be thin, happy, and not buying diet books. That is not the case at all. (Of course you also have people that will over-eat no matter how good the advice is, which is a whole different problem. I don't think every single person that is struggling is in this group, as some will claim.)
I think the critics do have some things to point out, because he is going a bit far. What started out as a research project to understand what the medical community is fucking up, also has statements by Taubes on what he eats himself. Then people go after that to try and discredit him and cover their asses. Dr Oz is doing this very thing on his show, making fun of how Taubes eats, and finding everything he can wrong with it assuming that everyone else would do it too.
Taubes also doesn't give a shit about exercise because it didn't work for him. His work explains why. That doesn't mean that no one should do it, but this draws fire as well. It does seem to be true that exercise, as a weight management strategy (not talking about athletes who do it for their own fitness) has limited usefulness. I don't think he is accounting for people who are able to build up muscle mass and boost their metabolism as a result, so they read his stuff and don't like it either.
Once the exercise part of the debate kicks in, I have noticed that experts have a hard time shooting down his claim that it is just not that useful as a weight management strategy, so they change the subject to the other benefits, which are not really the point, in this case.
I don't care if all the people who think they were right all along call Taubes an asshole and find things wrong with his work. I think he already made them look like assholes anyway. In the end the public just needs better, more accurate information. To re-iterate the post above, the information the public gets is bullshit unless it starts to take into account how resistant or sensitive people are to insulin. Without each person knowing this at the beginning, all diet advice is just a guess.