In late November of this year Gary Taubes gave a number of talks to members of various departments at the University of California at Berkeley. One of these talks – The Quality of Calories: What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care – was recorded and can be viewed by clicking here. You need Real Player to watch the video. If you don’t have it, simply Google real player or real player mac and you will find a free download of the program.

Gary’s talk expands on one of the theses in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories: the idea that obesity isn’t caused by gluttony and sloth, but by excess carbohydrate intake instead. If you haven’t read the book or if you have and you want the weight-loss section explained in greater depth, this video is for you. He’s a little more open than he was in the book about naming names and pointing the finger at people who for whatever reason can’t see the forest for the trees. The video is long – almost two hours – but well, well worth watching.

I’m going to be seeing Gary in about a week. We’ll have one of our many hour visits at a coffee house in downtown Manhattan. If anyone has a question for Gary, put in in a comment, and I’ll ask him as many as I can while I’m overdosing on caffeine.

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John McCrae, M.D. (1872-1918)

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 WWI, The Great War, the war to end all wars, was formally ended with the German signing of the Armistice. We commemorate this day – formerly called Armistice Day – each November 11.

No one who wasn’t there or who isn’t a student of WWI can possible imagine the carnage, the vast populations of young English, German, French, Canadian, Australian and American males who perished in a conflict many feel was bungled by the generals on all sides. All who survived it couldn’t imagine there ever being another war like it. Little did they know.

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An annoying comment I hear all the time whenever I talk about how Ancel Keys set the country on the disastrous nutritional course it has been on for the last 40 years runs something like this: ‘I dunno. Key’s must have been doing something right because he lived to be 100.’

First, the fact that Key’s himself lived to be 100 doesn’t mean squat. Everyone has a relative somewhere that defied the odds. I would bet that just about anyone can name someone who smoked, drank and was obese who lived to a ripe old age. Winston Churchill, for one, comes to mind. Smoked, loved his booze, was obviously obese, and lived to be 90. It’s not the individuals that matter in terms of health and longevity, but populations as a whole. And since the US (and now the world, it seems) has been following the wisdom of Ancel Keys, look what has happened. Obesity and diabetes are at epidemic levels. So, while Ancel himself lived a long life, I’m not so sure a lot of his victims will.

But, since people obnoxiously continue to point out that Keys made it to triple digits by allegedly following his own recommendations, let’s look at another individual (which, again, mean nothing in scientific terms) for comparison’s sake.

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Finally the New York Times comes up with a halfway decent review of Gary Taubes’ book Good Calories, Bad Calories. In yesterday’s Science section John Tierney (obviously not a member of the Kolata/Brody/Burros coven) takes a serious look at Gary’s book and what it has to say about the mainstream medical/nutritional establishment’s recommendation to follow a low-fat diet.

Gary Taubes spends many pages in detailed analysis of how the mainstream went wrong in promulgating these incorrect recommendations for so many years despite the mountains of contradictory evidence. John Tierney brilliantly sums up the same situation in just a few paragraphs using a TV show most of us are familiar with as an example: Read more »