Book 28: Why We Get Fat

I was reluctant to read this book because I thought he was going to tell me I needed to become an omnivore--at least, that was what I had heard about the book. Why would I want to read that?



Thankfully, Taubes did not alienate this most-of-the-time vegan. Essentially, all he's saying is that refined flours and sugars (even "natural" ones like maple syrup or agave nectar) will make you gain fat. That's pretty hard to argue with. I believe that anyway. Now, to get those sneaky foods out of my diet again and retrain my tastebuds.

I do have a couple of questions that Taubes didn't address. If hormones like insulin (and to a lesser extent, estrogen and testosterone) affect weight gain, how are endocrine disruptors in the environment involved? One would think all that BPA would make us thinner, since it's a pseudo-estrogen, right?

I'm also wondering about the longevity of the Inuit, who ate a traditional hunter-gatherer diet fairly recently. I had never gotten the impression that the Inuit were particularly long-lived, but maybe that is related to accidents and injuries, rather than illness. I do absolutely believe that the introduction of refined flours and sugars to the Inuit diet has been terrible for their health, though.