The San Jose Peninsula District Dietetic Association book club meets every few months to discuss popular books relevant to food and nutrition professionals. The members of the book club are registered dietitians or studying to become a dietitian. In May we met to discuss our latest read, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

Here are the big ideas we gleaned from Taubes’ book:
-      He provides an interesting review of the history of the dietary fat recommendations. His take: beginning in the 1950s, a few scientists passionately believed that eating saturated fat caused heart disease. Their fervor biased their ability to objectively review scientific data on the subject (any studies that did not agree with their hypothesis were considered flawed). In this book, Taubes makes a compelling argument that scientists got the fat/heart disease connection completely wrong. Interestingly, the May issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has a series of articles on the same topic – perhaps fat is not the villain it was once perceived.
-      He also makes the case that carbohydrate is the problem macro-nutrient and the fat recommendations caused consumers to consume more carbohydrate which brought about the obesity crisis. He claims the fewer carbohydrates we consume the leaner we will be.
-      Dietary carbohydrates are likely the cause of coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Key points from our discussion:
-      Population guidelines, that recommend one way of eating for everyone, miss the mark for many people; individualized recommendations are the direction we need to be moving.
-      The National Weight Loss Registry follows people who have successfully lost weight. Most people who have successfully lost weight eat a low-fat diet. Although overloading on carbohydrates is far from recommended, a low-fat eating style has certainly been a successful model for many.
-      Vilifying a single ingredient (either fat or carbohydrate) confuses consumers and fills them with guilt. People eat for many reasons beyond nutrition—taste, cost, convenience, emotion, family traditions to name a few. These are not accounted for in this book. All foods can fit into a healthy diet if consumed in moderation.

We enjoyed this book and it was worth reading. As health professionals, we need to challenge ourselves to look at original research and make sure the conclusions drawn are really reflected in the data. We need to caution ourselves from getting so attached to a nutritional dogma, that we are no longer able to review scientific findings critically.

Maureen Bligh, M.A., R.D.

Project Manager