Good Calories, Bad Calories: A Critical Review (part 1)

I have a special place in my heart for pop science books. They can be a great way for accomplished scientists to take a complex field of study and distill it down to its essentials. They can also be a great way for excellent science communicators to take what might seemingly be a dry and boring field and make it exciting. Several years ago I stoked my interest in nutrition with a pantheon of pop science books. I devoured these books as quickly and pleasurably as I would a delicious meal. However, now looking back with many advanced science and nutrition classes under my belt I view these texts as overly simplistic and usually presented with a heavy bias. I still think popular nutrition books are fine if you want a good yarn with some nutrition science thrown in or maybe you’re waiting in an airport somewhere for your plane to arrive, but I wouldn’t take any of them too seriously. Their claims will not be vetted well, if at all. The first amendment of the US constitution allows for virtually anything to be published. Textbooks and scholarly journal articles on the other hand are different animals because they experience more rigorous evaluations prior to publishing. Although they can be quite dry and contain more scientific jargon, textbooks and journal articles are the way to go if you are looking for cold hard facts.

With that out of the way let me introduce Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. I had heard the name of Gary Taubes some time ago, but I did not directly engage any of his writing until recently when he wrote a blog post that I found to be extraordinarily ideological.

I decided to read Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories because it was apparent to me that, much like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it was hugely influential to a pocket of its readers. Also like Atlas Shrugged it is an awful, awful book.¹

 

The Essentials

The title of this post includes the words “Part One” because GCBC is a seven-course meal. There is no way I would be able to address the entirety of the book in a single blog post; however, I do not plan to write a part two. I just don’t feel like it would be worth my time. Just know that a single post on GCBC is incomplete.

GCBC is truly one of the most researched and meticulously-referenced nutrition books out there. Unfortunately it’s also heavily biased as well, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Here are the main ideas presented in the book:

• A Harvard epidemiologist named Ancel Keys fabricated some data linking heart disease to saturated fat intake. Taubes refers to this as the “Lipid Hypothesis”² and was able to convince many scientists, the media, the public, non-governmental organizations (such as the AMA & AHA), and ultimately policy-makers at the highest levels of government to accept his flawed ideas.
• Contrary to mainstream thinking saturated fats, especially those coming from animal sources are actually quite good for you.
• Most diseases of modern civilization including obesity and cancer can be attributed to carbohydrates.
• Consuming excess calories does not make one fat, nor do burning excess calories make one thin.

The Actual Science

Let’s tackle that last claim first: excess calories does not make one fat, nor do burning excess calories make one thin. Instead of citing the studies in the footnotes where they will probably be ignored I will plaster them right here.

1. Metabolic effects of isoenergetic nutrient exchange over 24 hours in relation to obesity in women. Conclusion: “There were no large differences in energy expenditure between the two diets or between the groups…”
2. Energy-intake restriction and diet-composition effects on energy expenditure in men. Conclusion: “There was no significant difference in 24-hour energy expenditure between the diet groups.”
3. Nutrient balance in humans: effects of diet composition. Conclusion: “Total daily energy expenditure was not affected by the composition of the diet when caloric intake was fixed. Similarly, the different diet compositions did not alter SMR [sleeping metabolic rate], RMR [resting metabolic rate], or MRACT [energy expenditure due to activity or movement] of the subject.”
4. Nutrient balance and energy expenditure during ad libitum feeding of high-fat and high-carbohydrate diets in humans. Conclusion: “Individual body weights fluctuated (by < 0.25 kg) throughout the study, but we did not observe any systematic increase or decrease in the body weight of any subject. Additionally, there was not a significant change in the average body weight of the group as a whole over the course of the study.”
5. Substrate oxidation and energy expenditure in athletes and nonathletes consuming isoenergetic high- and low-fat diets. Conclusion: “The amount of energy expended in all activities … during the day was not significantly different among groups for either unadjusted … or adjusted data… The proportion of energy expended in activity did not differ among groups or among days… There were also no significant differences in sleep EE [energy expenditure] among groups…”
6. Regulation of macronutrient balance in healthy young and older men. Conclusion: “Body mass, percentage fat, and fat-free mass were similar in the two groups. Twenty-four-hour energy expenditure (EE) and energy balance did not differ across diets or between groups…”
7. The effect of protein intake on 24-h energy expenditure during energy restriction. Conclusion: “24-h EE [energy expenditure] and SMR [sleeping metabolic rate] declined on all three diets… Weight loss was similar on all three diets [high protein, high carbohydrate, and high fat].”
8. Effects of dietary fat and carbohydrate exchange on human energy metabolism. Conclusion: ”Twenty-four-hour RQ [respiratory quotient] and 24-h EE [energy expenditure] were not significantly different between restrained and unrestrained eating subjects on the LF, M and HF [low-fat, medium-fat, and high-fat] diet…”
9. Energy expenditure in humans: effects of dietary fat and carbohydrate. Conclusion: “In the nondiabetic group there was no decrease in 24-h energy expenditure or in any component of 24-h energy expenditure on the high-fat compared with the high-carbohydrate diet… In the diabetic group the high-fat diet did not result in a decrease in either 24-h energy expenditure or in any of the components of 24-h energy expenditure…”
10. Failure to increase lipid oxidation in response to increasing dietary fat content in formerly obese women.Conclusion: “Although the study was carried out over a period of a year the subjects succeeded in maintaining a constant body weight so that no differences were present during the different diets. Twenty-four-hour EE was influenced by diet composition in postobese women but not in control women, but the group x diet effect was not significant.”
11. Energy intake required to maintain body weight is not affected by wide variation in diet composition. Conclusion: “Even with extreme changes in the fat-carbohydrate ratio (fat energy varied from 0% to 70% of total intake), there was no detectable evidence of significant variation in energy need as a function of percentage fat intake.”
12. Weight-loss with low or high carbohydrate diet? Conclusion: “Neither diet offered a significant advantage when comparing weight loss or other metabolic parameters over a 12 w period.”
13. Effect of high protein vs high carbohydrate intake on insulin sensitivity, body weight, hemoglobin A1c, and blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Conclusion: “Patients in both the high-carbohydrate and the high-protein groups lost weight… The difference between groups was not significant…Initial REEs were similar in the two groups… and did not change during the study.”
14. Is a calorie a calorie? Conclusion: “We conclude that a calorie is a calorie. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, this is clear because the human body or, indeed, any living organism cannot create or destroy energy but can only convert energy from one form to another.”
15. Energy intake required to maintain body weight is not affected by wide variation in diet composition. Conclusion: “Even with extreme changes in the fat-carbohydrate ratio (fat energy varied from 0% to 70% of total intake), there was no detectable evidence of significant variation in energy need as a function of percentage fat intake.”

That should take care of the ridiculous claim that excess calories do not make you fat. What about the carbohydrates v. fat issue at the heart of the book? Below are a few studies showing that high carbohydrate, moderate carbohydrate, and low carbohydrate diets are more-or-less the same when it comes to weight loss.³

1. Long Term Effects of Energy-Restricted Diets Differing in Glycemic Load on Metabolic Adaptation and Body Composition Conclusion: “There was no statistically significant difference in metabolic adaptation to the HG [high-glycemic] and LG [low-glycemic] diets but adherence to the LG regimen apparently caused greater loss of body fat and less loss of FFM [fat-free mass] for the same amount of overall weight loss.”
2. Long-term effects of 2 energy-restricted diets differing in glycemic load on dietary adherence, body composition, and metabolism in CALERIE: a 1-y randomized controlled trial. Conclusion: “There was a statistically significant decrease in mean percentage fat over time (P < 0.0001) consistent with body weight change; however, the difference between diet groups was not statistically significant over time.” And “[C]hanges in energy intake, body weight, body fat, and resting metabolic rate did not differ significantly between groups.”
3. Efficacy and safety of low-carbohydrate diets: a systematic review. Conclusion: “At the end of both lower- and higher-carbohydrate diets, participants’ weight, BMI, and percentage of body fat decreased. In general, for both lower- and higher-carbohydrate diets, we found the greatest weight loss occurred among those participants receiving diets with the lowest caloric content and for those participants with the highest baseline weights.”
4. Popular Diets: A Scientific Review Conclusion: “Data support the contention that those consuming low-fat, low-calorie diets are most successful in maintaining weight loss.”
5. Effects of 4 weight-loss diets differing in fat, protein, and carbohydrate on fat mass, lean mass, visceral adipose tissue, and hepatic fat: results from the POUNDS LOST trial. Conclusion: “Fat loss or lean mass loss did not differ between diet assignments of high (25%) and average (15%) protein… high (40%) and low (20%) fat… or highest (65%) and lowest (35%) carbohydrate… at 6 mo. Between-diet differences remained nonsignificant at 2 y…”
6. In type 2 diabetes, randomisation to advice to follow a low-carbohydrate diet transiently improves glycaemic control compared with advice to follow a low-fat diet producing a similar weight loss. Conclusion: “There was no difference in weight reduction between the groups at 6 months … There were also no statistically significant differences in weight reduction between groups after adjustment for baseline carbohydrate or fat intake…”
7. Comparison of weight-loss diets with different compositions of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Conclusion: “Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.”
8. Similar weight loss with low- or high-carbohydrate diets. Conclusion: “The results of this study showed that it was energy intake, not nutrient composition, that determined weight loss in response to low-energy diets over a short time period.”
9. Effect of energy restriction, weight loss, and diet composition on plasma lipids and glucose in patients with type 2 diabetes. Conclusion: “Despite differences in dietary composition, weight loss was not significantly different between groups.”
10. Effects of moderate variations in macronutrient composition on weight loss and reduction in cardiovascular disease risk in obese, insulin-resistant adults. Conclusion: “[P]atients lost weight in response to both the 60% carbohydrate (5.7 ± 0.7 kg) and 40% carbohydrate (6.9 ± 0.7 kg) dietary interventions… [T]he difference in the amount of weight loss was not significant when the 2 diet programs were directly compared.”
11. Atkins and other low-carbohydrate diets: hoax or an effective tool for weight loss? Conclusion: “There is no clear evidence that Atkins-style diets are better than any others for helping people stay slim, and despite the popularity and apparent success of the Atkins diet, evidence in support of its use lags behind.”
12. Ketogenic low-carbohydrate diets have no metabolic advantage over nonketogenic low-carbohydrate diets. Conclusion: “At the end of the 6-wk trial, the total weight loss did not differ significantly between diet groups.”
13. Lack of suppression of circulating free fatty acids and hypercholesterolemia during weight loss on a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. Conclusion: “Within both diet groups, patients lost weight… There was no significant difference in weight loss between the 2 diet groups…”
14. Low-fat versus low-carbohydrate weight reduction diets: effects on weight loss, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular risk: a randomized control trial. Conclusion: “The results in Table 5 indicate that the mean weight loss from baseline was similar between the two diet groups … There was no significant difference in the change in either waist circumference (reflecting central adiposity) or percentage body fat (determined by DEXA) between the diet groups…”
15. Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone diets for weight loss and heart disease risk reduction: a randomized trial. Conclusion: “[A]ll 4 diets resulted in modest statistically significant weight loss at 1 year, with no statistically significant differences between diets…”
16. Long-term effects of a very-low-carbohydrate weight loss diet compared with an isocaloric low-fat diet after 12 mo. Conclusion: “[T]here was a significant reduction in weight (P < 0.001), but no significant difference between diets…”
17. Weight and metabolic outcomes after 2 years on a low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diet: a randomized trial. Conclusion: “We found no statistically significant differences in weight loss at any time point between the low-carbohydrate and low-fat diet groups…”
18. The effect of a plant-based low-carbohydrate (“Eco-Atkins”) diet on body weight and blood lipid concentrations in hyperlipidemic subjects. Conclusion: “No significant differences were found in any of the variables between the 2 groups.”
19. Fat and carbohydrate overfeeding in humans: different effects on energy storage.Conclusion: “Excess dietary fat leads to greater fat accumulation than does excess dietary carbohydrate, and the difference was greatest early in the overfeeding period.”

20. Macronutrient disposal during controlled overfeeding with glucose, fructose, sucrose, or fat in lean and obese women. Conclusion: “There was no significant difference in fat balance during controlled overfeeding with fat, fructose, glucose, or sucrose.”
21. Effects of isoenergetic overfeeding of either carbohydrate or fat in young men. Conclusion: “No significant differences between the C[carbohydrate-rich]- and F[fat-rich]-group were observed.”

The above studies are focused on weight loss. Of course diets may be different when looking at other markers of health such as triglycerides, cholesterol, inflammation, C-reactive protein, insulin, glycosylated hemoglobin, blood pressure, etc. We can have a spirited debate about what diets might be best for overall health (and I’m sure we will in the comments section), but at least in terms of weight loss or weight gain calories matter far more than the macronutrient composition.

 

Not in Good faith?

GCBC was published in 2007. Knowing what I do about the publishing industry⁴ I imagine Mr. Taubes would have had to submit a final manuscript to his publisher in either 2006 or very early in 2007. In his epilogue on page 453, Taubes claims he spent five years researching and writing the book which would put the start date of his research at roughly 2001 or 2002. On page xxv of the prologue he mentions conducting over 600 interviews with different people as part of his research, which is an impressive number of people. However, there is one person featured prominently in the book that Taubes does not interview: Ancel Keys. If you have read the book you will notice that much ink is devoted smearing Dr. Keys and his work yet, according to Taubes’s references, not one interview was conducted with Keys. If one was interested in fair, objective reporting you would think that you would try to speak with a man that essentially invented and popularized the “lipid hypothesis.” Right?

Let’s try to think of reasons why Taubes did not interview Keys… Maybe Taubes repeatedly tried to obtain an interview with Keys, but was turned down or simply ignored. This is certainly possible, but I saw no mention of it in the book. I think Taubes would want to mention something like that, because that’s what good reporters do, plus it could add to the narrative that Keys’s work is indefensible.

Other reasons? Dr. Ancel Keys died in late 2004 at the age of 100, so perhaps he was too old and infirm to conduct any interviews. Maybe he had Alzheimer’s or dementia and could not speak intelligently about his past. It’s possible. Of course Taubes could speak to Keys’s surviving wife, Margaret, about her husband’s life and work. Taubes even writes a bit about her anyway because they did quite a bit of research together and even co-wrote How to Eat Well and Stay Well the Mediterranean Way that Taubes cites in GCBC. She would be a great interview! She’s probably full of interesting stories. But no, he did not interview Margaret Keys either. They also had a son that is now a doctor residing in New York state –Taubes also lives in New York state, it’s perfect! I’ll bet junior Keys has some great insight into his dear old dad. Welp, if he does Taubes was not interested in hearing them. It’s a shame. I bet any one of them could have provided some great information.

My theory? Taubes knew he was going to vilify Keys before he even began writing; after all the book would lose much of the spicy narrative about a mad scientist tricking the world into believing dietary nonsense. If Taubes is beholden to an ideology over evidence then any interview with a member of the Keys family is wholly unnecessary.

You Are Being Manipulated

Taubes uses subtle manipulation techniques to persuade his audience. Consider the following list of words.

These are the words Taubes uses to describe proponents of what he calls the “lipid hypothesis.” Even if you have never read the book or even know anything about its subject matter, a negative impression begins to form in your mind of the idea and its advocates. For instance you might feel that it’s nothing but speculation at best and at worst it’s a downright dangerous falsehood that is being shoved down our throats by religious zealots. I don’t blame you. That is some strong rhetoric Taubes is using. Now contrast this with the word choice used to describe those who espouse low-carb diets:

These people seem to be calmly and coolly presenting the facts. Instead of bombarding and crusading with a ridiculous dogma like the other guys, these people are merely skeptics suggesting an alternative hypothesis. Hell, you barely need to think for yourself or fact-check the author. Choosing the right side of this argument should be a no-brainer.

In rhetoric this is known as Framing or sometimes as Priming. It’s a subtle manipulation technique leading you to implicitly associate two unrelated ideas with one another. In this case Taubes wants you to associate “lipid hypothesis” with “myth” and those who do not advocate low-carb diets, such as Ancel Keys, with religious zealotry. By the way, these words are from only the prologue & first chapter; the verbiage gets piled higher and deeper as you get further into the book.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Gary Taubes

I honestly did not expect to find near as many misleading quotes, misrepresentation of studies, or outright fabrication as I did in Good Calories, Bad Calories. I mean Taubes writes for The New York Times for Christ’s sake – arguably the most prestigious and most influential newspaper in the history of the world.

Nearly every single time I bothered to check a reference made in Good Calories, Bad Calories I found that Taubes had at best taken something out of context or at worst completely misrepresented a study. Not kidding. Here are a few examples beginning with the more anodyne.

• Taubes takes Steven Jay Gould out of context.

On page 18 of the hardcover edition of GCBC, Taubes discusses Ancel Keys and the relationship between diet and heart disease and writes “Associations do not imply cause and effect or represent (as Stephen Jay Gould would later put it) ‘any magic method for the unambiguous identification of cause.’” While reading that paragraph, you might get the impression that SJG was responding to Keys’s work or perhaps making a more general critique of nutrition science, but you would be wrong. In fact that quote by SJG come from a book titled The Mismeasure of Man⁵ which is about racism, IQ, and evolutionary biology and had absolutely nothing to do with diet, fat intake, heart disease, Ancel Keys, or essentially anything discussed in GCBC. It’s a really strange and out-of-place quote, and I’m not sure why Taubes would use it. The only reason I can imagine would be in the hopes that some of SJG’s gravitas would be associated with Taubes’s own ideas in the reader’s mind. Although there is nothing technically dishonest here Taubes does take Gould out of context, and as Albert Einstein said “I agree with your remark.”⁶

• Taubes completely lies about the results of a study

This is actually one of the juicier lies in GCBC and occurs on the very same paragraph as the above Gould remark. For a bit of context, Taubes is discussing a cross-sectional study by one Ancel Keys that demonstrates a relationship between a population’s fat intake and its rates of heart disease. Taubes writes “Many researchers wouldn’t buy it. [Yerushalmy and Hilleboe] co-authored a critique of Keys’s hypothesis, noting that Keys had chosen only six countries for his comparison though data were available for twenty-two countries. When all twenty-two were included in the analysis, the apparent link between fat and heart disease vanished.” This is not true.⁷ Let’s look at the actual Yerushalmy and Hilleboe study, shall we? (I apologize for the poor definition of these pictures. I did not scan them in. Long story.)

The top graph shows Keys’s data as presented by Yerushalmy and Hilleboe. It’s a very strong correlation, but Y&H are skeptical and decide to take similar data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that includes more countries than the measly six that Keys had. However, contrary to Taubes’s claim the correlation does not vanish. If I were to run a R² coefficient analysis I may not get 1.0, but I would certainly get above 0.0. In other words, sure the association is not as strong as with Keys’s data, but there is a definitive relationship.

But Y&H don’t stop there. Just for kicks let’s read on and see what else Y&H have in store for us… What’s this? It appears that Y&H have separated out some dietary components for us and have done some statistical analyses. Let’s take a look at what they found.

It’s difficult to see because of the cheap scanner, but those are negative signs in front of the vegetable fat and vegetable protein numbers.

As you can see in the table if you separate animal fat from vegetable fat and do an individual analysis on each then vegetable fat ends up being negatively correlated with heart disease while animal fat has a strongly positive correlation with heart disease. This correlation is also true of animal protein and vegetable protein and even remains if you calculate total fat/protein intake or fat/protein intake as a percentage of calories.  Remarkable.

In the second picture you can see an association with mortality that becomes even tighter when examined with animal protein. I’ll leave it to you to imagine why Taubes might leave such highly relevant data so conspicuously absent from his book.

• Taubes wildly exaggerates the results of a study

Page after page and chapter after chapter Taubes hammers away at the “lipid hypothesis” and on page 44 even goes so far as to claim that “polyunsaturated fats can cause cancer in laboratory animals.” This is supposed to be a devastating blow to anyone who might espouse a Mediterranean-style diet that advocates a limited consumption of fats from beef and lard in favor of fats from fish, seeds, and nuts. It probably would be a devastating blow if it were true. Considering I had never heard or read anything in all my graduate and undergraduate nutrition courses that would even approach authenticating this statement I decided to check his references for this bold claim.

He cites two references to support his claim. One is not even a study, but a 1973 New York Times article that is behind a paywall so I cannot read it in its entirety.⁸ The NYT website does provide a summary of the article that does not mention polyunsaturated fats, cancer, or laboratory animals.

Let’s give Taubes the benefit of the doubt here; let us assume that the article does go into detail about some studies that have been done on laboratory animals examining the potential link between polyunsaturated fats and cancer. Why not simply cite those studies? Why make your readers go through the trouble of unearthing an ancient NYT article, only to have them sleuth further to find the actual data? I have my own theory, but moving on…

The second reference he cites in support of his bold polyunsaturated-fats-cause-cancer-in-laboratory-animals claim is actually an original dietary study! It’s older even than the NYT article mentioned above, and it does not involve laboratory animals but rather elderly men.⁹ Ready for some details? Briefly, men were randomly assigned to a control diet or an experimental diet. The control diet consisted of 10% polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and ~650 mg/day of cholesterol. The experimental diet consisted of 40% PUFAs and ~365 mg/day of cholesterol. Both groups, however, had the same total fat intake as a percentage of calories. Subjects were followed for eight years. So what were the results? Unsurprisingly to most the control group had the most “fatal atherosclerotic events” as the authors put it. But what about cancer? Turns out the experimental group did experience more cancer deaths than the control. This is certainly incongruous with most of the current evidence on the subject as well as the available evidence at the time when the study was published. The authors even mention this, stating, “The experience of other investigators using similar diets has not been the same” and “Many of the cancer deaths in the experimental group were among those who did not adhere closely to the diet. This reduces the possibility that the feeding of polyunsaturated oils was responsible for the excess carcinoma mortality observed in the experimental group…In both groups, the numbers of cancer deaths among the various adherence strata are compatible with random distribution.” I’ll let you decide whether or not this singular study provides sufficient backing for the claim that polyunsaturated fats can cause cancer.

Cognitive Dissonance

One major arc presented in Good Calories, Bad Calories is essentially a conspiracy theory. Taubes makes the argument that politicians, the press, and scientists are all in collusion to deceive the general public. The problem with this (aside from simply being absurd) is that Taubes tries to use scientific studies to make a positive case for why everyone should be eating low-carb diets and debunk any healthfulness of non-low-carb diets.  Yet almost in the same breath he will decry scientists and their studies for being mindless government minions bent on pushing nutrition propaganda. Is this rational?

For instance, on page 53 Taubes brings up four studies that show no significant association between dietary fat consumption and heart disease.¹⁰ This is done to bolster the narrative that the public has been sold a bill of goods when it comes to fat and heart disease. Then on the very same page he implies that they are corrupt by saying “[I]t’s hard to avoid the suspicion that once the government began advocating fat reduction in the American diet it changed the way many investigators in this science perceived their obligations… Now they no longer felt obliged to test any hypothesis.” I don’t know why Taubes would do this; the studies kind of helped him make a case, but then he shot himself in the foot by questioning the researchers’ ethics.

Funky References

Gary Taubes has a strange way he cites references – well strange to me anyway. If Taubes makes a factual claim or quotes someone and you want to get the juice for the claim or the context for the quote then you have to read-over the sentence in question remember either the first few words the sentence starts with (like “The amazing thing about…”) or the subject of the paragraph (e.g. “Fiber and colon cancer”) and note the page you’re on. Then you flip to a series of pages titled “References” near the end of the book. Look for the page number and then the subject matter in question. Hopefully you can find it easily. So let’s say you find the beginning of your sentence then you’ll get one or more references, like “Keys 1975.” Then you hop over to another section of the book titled “Bibliography” and look for Keys. Once found look for a source published in 1975 since there are quite a bit of Keys references cited in the book. If you find more than one Keys 1975 reference (there are multiple) then you’ll just have to go with your gut (no pun intended) on which reference is actually the one you are looking for.

Another thing to note is that many (if not most) of Taubes’s sources are not available to the average Joe. You might be able to get the abstracts through NCBI, but with all of the studies that I decided to look up I had to go through my university’s library system to access the actual paper. Even then I had to order a couple of things via an interlibrary loan from Canada and Oregon to get the actual source because it was not available online or even in physical form in University of Washington’s vast physical archives. After a while I simply gave up on any source that was not available at UW. I’m not getting paid to fact-check this guy, after all. This, of course, does not even include things like personal one-on-one interviews that Taubes conducted which are only available to Taubes.

I was also interested in two books that Taubes cited, neither of which contained a page number in the reference.

If I was a more cynical man I would say Taubes is making it difficult for the reader to fact-check him.  You can trust this face. Would this face lie to you?

1. To be fair, after my previous encounter with Taubes’s work I was predisposed to not like the book, but I approached it as impartially as could.
2. despite the fact that I have never heard that term used by actual scientists, nutritionists, dietitians, professors, etc.
3. I have to give credit where it is due. I did not do the leg-work when it comes to aggregating these studies. That goes to eric_twinge.
4. Which is admittedly very little.
5. Taubes cites the book as the source of the quote, but does not give a page number on where to find it in the book’s 352 pages. Incidentally the passage can be found on page 272 in the paperback version.
6. On the Christian maxim “Love thy enemy”, in a letter to Michele Besso (6 January 1948)
7. Yerushalmy J. and H. E. Hilleboe. 1957. Fat in the diet and mortality from heart disease. A methodologic note. New York State Med. Jour. 57:2343-2354.
8. I’m not about to pay for the privilege of reading it nor do I want to wade through my university’s microfilm collection to look at it.
9. Pearce ML and Dayton S. (1971) Incidence of Cancer in Men on a Diet High in Polyunsaturated Fat. The Lancet Vol. 297, Issue 7697, Pages 464-467.
10. In actuality only three of the four studies show no association between dietary fat and heart disease, but at this point I am no longer surprised when Taubes exaggerates the science. Interestingly some of the studies do show carbohydrates providing a mild protective effect against heart disease. One wonders if Taubes even bothers to read the stuff he cites.

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