The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz
 

The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz

Review by Dr. Mike Eades. Very long, graphs and charts, difficult to copy here.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/...g-fat-surprise/

There are separate threads for a WSJ article by same author and Rush Limbaugh's discussion of it, but since the book will be published tomorrow, starting a separate thread for book reviews and analysis of the book itself.

I preordered it on Audible and it came in today... probably won't get to it for a few weeks though.

Thanks for posting the link, Janet. I wasn't sure if I would get this one - would it be a rehash of Taubes? would it distinguish itself from Minger? Based on Mike Eades' review, it definitely sounds worth the read. It is now on its way to me.

It's almost feeling like National Low Carb Week with Fed Up and BFS coming out at the same time.

Just ordered it! 42 years later, and the good Dr. Atkins is finally 100% vindicated!

I just found out that my local library has two copies on order so I've put myself on the list to get it when it comes in. I love supporting our community libraries! :thup:

The Eades review is incredibly glowing. I especially liked this part towards the end:
If you are a low-carb dieter, yet you’ve had this kind of nagging doubt about eating saturated fat, this last chapter is for you. What if all the experts are right?, you’ve probably asked yourself. Hell, I’ve asked it myself. I eat a ton of saturated fat, so I’m literally betting my life that saturated fat isn’t harmful. Reading The Big Fat Surprise will relieve you of a lot of angst. It will convert even the fiercest of skeptics, unless they’re so mired in their ideology that they can’t be budged. But just as we saturated fat eaters have suffered our angst, they will now suffer theirs.

I found the part about height of children being stunted by low fat diets interesting. People in The Netherlands are among the tallest in the world, and I'll bet they don't subscribe to a low fat diet for their kids. As part of my job in the early '90s I got to work with a lot of Dutch people who came to the US for a few months. One day they hosted a barbeque where they cooked incredible amounts of meat. My American co-workers and I were done after one or two servings but they just kept eating and eating and eating the meat. And not a fat one in the bunch. They were puzzled why we didn't eat more!

Here is another solid review on Kirkus reviews. And, if you click on the following link to the review and scroll down to the comments, you'll see a near hysterical response from a Vegan true believer.

She seems to feel that meat eating is the root of all evil in the world. Not everybody will be convinced by data, logic, and evidence, not when it conflicts with what is essentially the central dogma of their lives.

Link

Thanks for Kirkus review!

To change the tone...found this Fox News interview on another site: http://video.foxnews.com/v/35619660...1#sp=show-clips

Loved throwing the bag of bagels away, but I worry that the audience only heard you can eat all the eggs, butter, and meats you want without also adding that you must reduce the carbs and sugars too. Yes,with fat they will eat less, but they also might keep the apple pie, whole wheat bread sandwich, coke, etc. A segment like this may push her closer to being burned at the stake.

I've never had an issue with the belief that meat eating is evil/wrong from an ethical standpoint. It's a defensible position. Where I have indigestion with the evangelical vegan types is the obfuscation of medical/nutritional logic. They simply can't, or won't, separate the ethical and the nutritional arguments.

I have often thought that the low-fat lie is particularly harmful to children. I see it every day in my daughter's (shorter, heavier, less athletic) friends who are all teen girls on low-fat because their moms are too. But BRAIN development is another thing that NEEDS fat. It's like they are purposely trying to make a shorter, fatter, dumber population. The cynical conspiracy theorist in me says that's not an accident either. If you want to control people, they have to need you. And if they are strong, healthy and sharp, that's less likely.

This resonates with me as I've thought the same thing. Being diabetic & following Dr. B's diet, I am also betting my life on what many doctors see as unconventional medical advice. Right now all I can be sure of is that I feel better and my BG & blood pressure numbers are down. But long term? I won't know that for a few years.

Big Fat Surprise author Nina Teicholz on WNYC
 

Nina Teicholz appeared (well, not really, its radio...) on the Leanord Lopate show today, you can hear it here:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/eating-fa...nt-make-us-fat/

This reminds me of something Jenny Ruhl said, I think in a podcast interview with Jimmy Moore. She said something about people going on low carb diets for a while, becoming convinced there was nothing to fear from fats, and then going off their diets and adding all the grains, sugars, etc back into their eating, along with the fats. Not a good thing to do.

That comment from Jenny Ruhl has stuck with me too (she develops it more in her book Diet 101) - bascially low carbers eat both high fat AND high carb when they go off the low carb diet. I know that's true for me, and I think it's contributed to the speed of regain when I've gone off the rails in the past 5 years.

But I also agree that good-quality fats are good for kids, and I don't feed my 2 kids low carb but they do get plenty of fat, including quite a bit of saturated fat.