How Carrots Became the new Junk Food

"Contrary to your assertion about Taubes "first making a name for himself" back in 2003, he's been a science writer for something like 30 years."

I'll quote the wikipedia article you linked to: "Taubes gained prominence in the low-carb diet debate following the publication of his 2002 New York Times Magazine piece "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?"."

That's how I know his name. If he was well-known before that, I was not aware of it.

I think there's a lot more to be said on the subject than a comparison of the degrees of Taubes and Fumento (and, really, since when is a masters degree in engineering and journalism qualification to tell people how to eat any more than a law degree?).

I'm not qualified to argue about whether Taubes is completely wrong about everything (which seems unlikely; even a broken clock is right twice a day) But, I do know that he is distinctly at odds with the majority of scientists who work in the dietary field. I'm talking about real scientists, with real science degrees. Doing real controlled scientific studies. Most of them consider Atkins a disaster for public health.

I'm willing to believe that the food industry has an unhealthy effect on the debate and the corn and cereal grain industries have a vested interest in seeing grains elevated to a holy position in the food pyramid. There may be a vasty wrongness about huge swaths of what we know about how we should be eating for maximum health. But, just like I have a hard time believing every scientist working in climate science is under the thumb of some great conspiracy to foist a global warming lie on the world...I can't really believe that every dietary scientist working would participate in a great scam, which is what you have to believe to believe that Taubes is mostly right.

"I think his main point is that the post WW2 infatuation with low-fat diets has been a disaster."

And the scientists he quoted have said repeatedly that the disaster is that we eat 20% more calories per day, in general, than we did before WW2, and that increased fat consumption also occurred during that time. The belief that "low-fat = healthy" is certainly a dangerous belief to have. But, the belief that a diet of almost exclusively animal proteins and fats is healthy is also pretty dangerous, as far as I can tell.

I started reading Taubes work after reading 4 Hour Body, since some of the theories in 4HB come directly from Taubes, and some of the bonus materials on the website are written by Taubes. But, the more I read up on him the less confidence I had in his scientific integrity.

In short: I don't know all the answers. But I'm pretty confident Taubes doesn't know either.

For the curious, the television ads are on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BunchOfCarrotFarmers#p/c/823F55B...

The inner core is very sweet, I have always looked at them as a sweet snack. Plus as a child I was told they would help me see in the dark better which I thought was a kind of super power.

When I was younger my Dad actually OD'd on carrots, he ate so many that his skin went orange.

“most of the goodness is actually in, or just below the skin” from http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/nutrition.html

Never seen Baby Carrots, but if they are “carved” from regular carrots, it sounds like they already lost some of their nutritional value.

I don't know. I've read quite a bit of his stuff, including a number of excerpts from Good Calories, Bad Calories. Some of it is sensible; we, as a culture, do eat a lot of stuff that isn't actually food, and it makes it easy to overeat without ever feeling satisfied, and not eating those processed food-like items (which happen to be packed full of carbs in a lot of cases) would improve your health and probably reduce your waistline. If someone is choosing between eating a steak with some spinach on the side and eating a microwave-able dinner (even one from Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice), I'm pretty sure the steak and spinach would be healthier. But, those aren't the only options.

I'm pretty sure, from the non-Taubes/non-Atkins reading I've done, that you don't have to limit yourself to almost nothing but meat and eggs and a few vegetables to lose weight or be healthy, and following Taubes/Atkins guidelines might cause you to die early of heart disease or some of the cancers caused by animal proteins. Or, you might have other problems caused by missing out on a lot of great nutrients found in fruits (which the low-carb thing tends to lead to avoiding). Again, there's some pretty damning evidence that Atkins does not work for sustainable weight loss on a large scale.

In short, I think it is a fad diet. Like most fad diets, you can lose weight on it, as long as it leads to consuming fewer calories. Like most fad diets, it is based on some sweeping generalizations pulled from a few highly selective bits of research. It's what happens when someone from the mainstream media writes about science. They don't qualify their statements enough, they make claims with absolute confidence when the science just isn't there.

I've been pretty interested in food and diet lately, and the absolute best books I've read on the subject have been Michael Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Both are utterly lovely. The claims it makes are humble, based on science (and tradition), and realistic.

The main thing I've come away with from reading a huge variety of books and websites on diet and nutrition is that we shouldn't be eating about 80+% of the "food" you find at Safeway or Walmart or even Whole Foods and Trader Joe's (though the percentage is probably 70% of those stores). Most of what people eat these days simply isn't food and humans shouldn't be consuming it, and certainly not in the quantities most Americans eat it. If it says "Low-fat" or "Low-carb" on the label, it should probably be on the "do not eat this, it isn't food" list.

This, I guess, means that we can all agree that there are good calories and bad calories...I just think Taubes doesn't have much science to back up what he believes constitute the good and bad calories; there's too much good science that conflicts with his claims. The science seems to indicate that nutrient-dense low-energy foods are the best foods to eat, in general. Whole foods seem to deliver the best balance of nutrition per calorie, while processed foods tend to have all the good stuff processed right out and some bits and pieces crammed back in via fortification. A lot of those non-foods are very high in carbs; but picking one macro-nutrient to be the devil and ignoring all the other important facets of food is probably a bad idea.

And, one final, snarky point: Taubes is pudgy. Looks to me like he's carrying around at least 20 extra pounds. I'm not sure I want to take diet advice from a guy who needs to lose more weight than I do (I'm carrying about 10 extra pounds, and it's nowhere near as noticeable as Taubes spare tire).