Jan 02 2012
REBROADCAST: Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It
This show is a re-broadcast.
These days obesity and its related health problems are a national obsession for doctors, politicians, and public health officials. Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. in recent years, with obesity rates sharply increasing for children as young as six months old. With higher obesity rates more prevalent among poorer Americans, obesity, and all the public health consequences of it, becomes an issue of social and economic justice. Now, a new book by science journalist Gary Taubes synthesizes ten years of research into the reasons behind obesity. The book is simply called Why We Get Fat. In it, Taubes makes a damning case about how the science linking dietary fat to heart disease and obesity was seriously misreported, leading to government agencies prescribing a low-fat, and in-effect, high-carbohydrate diet, that is precisely the recipe for obesity and its related diseases. Thirty years of increasing obesity rates, coinciding with pushing such a diet, is a testament to a public health policy gone horribly wrong. Taubes asserts that it is the tendency among health professionals and health reporters to link obesity to individual failings that has perverted the interpretation of the existing science. “We don’t get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we’re getting fat,” says Taubes.
GUEST: Gary Taubes, award winning science journalist, contributing correspondent for Science Magazine, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator in Health Policy Research at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health.
5 Responses to “REBROADCAST: Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It”
I can’t believe this man is being given air time without challenge, not even from the host, who seems to know as much about a healthy diet as the guest. He doesn’t sound very knowledgeable. He wrote a book. So what. And referring me to the USDA site to look up the benefits of lard is pretty laughable: the agency influenced by agri-business to give us the FOUR food groups? Really?
The root cause is the USA government. The Food today has more drugs than a pharmacy. The “Fake food” created by the USA and now used in the UK and Australia is the cause of the diabetes and obesity crisis. The lawsuits would be too many for the Governments of the USA, UK and AU to pay so we need a scapegoat…called McDonalds. 4 million people died in 12 months from Diabetes
just google SPIRIT HAPPY DIET
I applaud Gary Taubes and thank him for the difficult work he is doing trying to turn the ship of nutrition to sail into the wind instead of against it.
Gary is an extremely well educated scientific writer (has degree in Physics from Harvard among others) who has worked tirelessly to collect the data in both his books. He did not go into this research with a preconceived hypothesis about carbohydrates. He simply investigated, looking for the truth. The truth that he found is counter to everything we have been taught so some people think it must be wrong.
Gary’s books, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It” are filled with research data that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that carbohydrates are the villain in the game of nutrition.
My husband is a type 2 diabetic. He suffered for over 20 years before I read Gary’s article in the New York Times in 2002 “What If It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie?”, and his books GCBC and WWGF. I have also read Dr. Richard Bernstein’s book, “Diabetes Solution” along with books by Drs. Michael and Dan Eades, “Protein Power” and so many more. I knew this was an answer to our problem.
In 2002 my husband was on 43 units of insulin, he had severe neuropathy in both his feet so much so that he could not walk more than 75 feet without sitting down to rest. The neuropathy was debilitating. For over 15 years he was on pain medication to try to relieve the pins and needles pain he felt constantly. The medication was Neurontin – a highly potent drug that can cause unwelcome side affects to the kidneys and liver. In 2002 my husband was also morbidly obese at 280 pounds for a man who was 5’10”. Nothing he did helped. He had severe sleep apnea, night sweats (he had to put a bath towel on his pillow every night), psoriasis that made his elbows like sandpaper and he fell asleep at the wheel while driving on the interstate on night.
Since reading Gary’s books and putting together a program that my husband and I could live with, my husband has lost 100 pounds (80 of it in the first 9 months). In the first 3 months of the program he came off of insulin and has never looked back. The neuropathy that plagued him is gone! He has been in 2 5K races and finished. He walks 2 miles a day, 3 times a week at the local gym. He came off the pain medication, came off of diuretics, night sweats are gone, sleep apnea is gone. The psoriasis is gone! Elbows are soft as a downy chick.
For the past 9 years we have both been eating low/controlled carbs. It has been the best thing that has happened to us. Energy levels are sky high.
I have my husband back! I wouldn’t trade what we’ve had in the past 9 years for anything at all. We teach classes to others on How We Beat Diabetes. We want to share this news with all diabetics. You can beat this disease.
Thank you, Gary Taubes. Please keep up the excellent work.
This man is a fraud. This website exposes him:
http://www.atkinsexposed.org/atkins/11/The_Diet_Fad_of_the_21st_Century.htm
Plantpositive.com does an even better job.