The question of what makes us fat is one we all need to ask ourselves.
Science writer Gary Taubes addresses the issue in a new book: Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It. This is not a diet book. It is a review of the science and challenges most of the dominant public health beliefs of our time that obesity is caused by overeating and a sedentary lifestyle.
He says that the villain in weight gain is carbohydrates especially refined ones such as sugar white flour and high-fructose corn syrup not dietary fat. Carbohydrates are implicated not only in obesity but they are the most likely nutritional causes of heart disease while they also link to other diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Taubes works in health policy research at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and has won the Science in Slociety Awarf of the National Association of Science Writers three times.
Taubes is unequivocal about the cure for too much weight: Avoid carbohydrate-rich foods. He says it’s not about exercise or eating less. He says the phrase ‘artery-clogging saturated fats’ comes out of a time-warp from the 1970s and is not what is causing our epidemic of obesity. It is carbohydrates.