Dinner tonight at Casa Eades

Last Sunday the New York Times published a color spread on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data on the changes in food consumption in this country between 1970 and 2006, which got me to musing.

To the uninformed, which, sadly, probably means most people working in the nutrition industry and even those employed in a nutritional capacity at the USDA, these changes (all save two) seem to be in a positive direction. The intake of dairy products has decreased; the intake of vegetables has increased; the intake of red meat has fallen; the intake of fish, chicken and skyrocketed; the intake of fruit is up; the intake of grains has increased markedly; and the intake of vegetable fats has almost doubled. The only two negatives are that sugar and sweeteners have increased and overall food consumption has gone up by about 11 percent, or an addition 1.8 pounds per person per week.

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The May 2008 issue of Obesity Reviews, the journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, contained a review written by George Bray, M.D. of Gary Taubes’ book Good Calories, Bad Calories (GCBC). Gary Taubes has written a rebuttal that will appear in this same journal. Before we get to Gary’s response, I would like to spend a little time on Bray’s review, which I found interesting and troubling on a number of fronts.

Most reviews of books in academic journals are of academic books and are, at most, a page and a half, maybe two pages, long. The Bray review of GCBC was 13 pages long, including two plus pages of citations. And this for what is basically a popular book written for a general audience, not an academic tome. In all the reading I do of the medical literature, I’ve never seen a book review come even close to this in terms of length and comprehensiveness. Obviously Taubes’ work struck a chord.

George Bray, M.D. is probably the most renowned figure in the field of obesity research today. He is the Boyd Professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (and former executive director) in Baton Rouge, LA; he holds numerous other professorships at various academic institutions; he has held leadership positions in virtually every academic obesity organization in existence; he has authored or co-authored more than 500 scientific papers; he has written at least a dozen books and authored chapters in many more; and he figures prominently in the recent history of how the academic ideas of the causes and cures of obesity are what they are today. It speaks volumes that someone of Dr. Bray’s academic stature would be tapped to write a review (a review, in fact, that is longer than most scientific papers) of a popular book. GCBC has gotten the attention of the academic community.

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Moonrise, Jackson Hole (click to enlarge) photo by Daniel Eades

A study published in the current edition of the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrates once again that the low-carbohydrate diet is better than the low-fat diet in bringing about both weight loss and an improvement in lipid profiles. This study, as published, is not without its flaws, which we will get to in a due course. What I find amazing – or maybe I don’t – has been the press reaction.

First came the television reports (here, here and here), all of which reported the study as the Atkins diet triumphing over the low-fat diet and the beloved Mediterranean diet. TV was made for sound bites and sensationalism, so this report fits right in. Although numerous studies have shown the same superiority of the low-carb diet, the TV media seems to treat these studies in one of two ways: it ignores them or it treats them as a man-bites-dog kind of story. The print media has had a little time to reflect on the situation and is reporting the study in a different way.

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We’ve finally got the cover art for the new book, which is now up on Amazon for pre-order! It will not hurt our feelings a bit if you all order copies for your several thousand closest friends.

We’re in Wyoming right now, in Jackson Hole to be exact. We came out on a quick trip for a meeting and a little R & R while we’re here. Since we kind of left on short notice and aren’t really going to stay long (plus I didn’t know exactly what our accommodations would be), I didn’t bring my normal stack of medical papers. Hence, I’ll be blogging on some not so scientific stuff for the next couple of posts.

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I want to give you a few words of advice right up front. Keep this post close at hand so that you can send it out whenever anyone makes one of the following comments to you:

• The Chinese don’t follow low-carb diets and they’re healthy
• The Chinese eat a lot of carbs and they don’t get fat
• The Chinese follow a low-fat diet and they don’t get fat
• Fruits and vegetables don’t make you fat
• If vegetables really made you fat, the press would be all over it
• Researchers never misstate their findings
• Show me the study!

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