Big Fat Surprise Among the Best Books of the Year
Wall Street Journal has named the best books of the year. Among them is The Big Fat Surprise, a book that totally rejects the last decades’ unnecessary fear of saturated fat. In the book the shaky background is discussed – and how today the theory completely falls apart in the light of modern science.
The book is well-written and captivating, but long. It has also been criticized for resembling Gary Taube’s classic Good Calories, Bad Calories which partly goes through the same story (but only up until 2007).
Most of those critics can’t stand Taubes, so they can’t stand Teicholz either. I’m a huge fan of Taubes so I should enjoy Teicholz, but a lack of time combined with a slight feeling of déjà vu has, embarrassingly enough, prevented me from reading more than part of the book yet. Finishing it is on my to-do-list. You can still beat me to it:
Children who skip main meals are more likely to have excess body fat and an increased cardiometabolic risk already at the age of 6 to 8 years, according to a Finnish study. A higher consumption of sugary drinks, red meat and low-fat margarine and a lower consumption of vegetable oil are also related to a higher cardiometabolic risk.
Contact: Aino-Maija Eloranta
aino-maija.eloranta@uef.fi
358-505-344-255
University of Eastern Finland
Whatever methods they've used to twist the data from (no doubt) observational studies to come up with those recommendations are clearly nonsense. Feed the kids GRASS FED meat, particularly organ meat and watch them thrive. Healthy kids = healthy adults.
Quite well expressed in this article (which however I think is slightly spoiled by anti-Dawkins bias):
http://theweek.com/article/index/268360/how-our-botched-understanding...
Just recently I recall Zoe Harcombe mentioning that she had reviewed some of the original papers that have been used as foundations for the lipid hypothesis. She found shocking things - for example, the authors of several studies counted pies and cakes as "saturated fat", ignoring their other ingredients such as white flour and sugar.
Anybody still promoting omega-6 rich vegetable oils (what a misleading name!) clearly spent the last 20 years under a rock.
The link: http://www.amazon.com/Low-Carb-High-Food-Revolution/dp/1629145459/ref...
I think Nina Teicholz is the best story teller of everyone I've read and has a very clear argument. The book is also quite accessible.
Having said that, I've liked all the books I've read on the subject. It's just that The Big Fat Surprise is the best story.