© Thomas Levinson / The Chronicle
Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat, says carbohydrates and not fatty foods are to blame for weight gain.
Ten years ago, science writer Gary Taubes exercised an hour a day. He avoided fat in his diet, never even using milk in his oatmeal. But he kept gaining weight. As an experiment, the self-described carnivore tried the high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet - eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, pepperoni with melted mozzarella for lunch, and a steak for dinner - and lost 20 pounds in six weeks.
Since then, Taubes, an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, has stuck with the diet and spent countless hours collecting evidence to prove that it's not how much we eat but what we eat that makes us gain weight. In his fourth book,
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Knopf; 257 pages; $24.95), Taubes argues that an apple a day will not keep the doctor away. In fact, if your biological fate is to be overweight, that apple will tip the scales against you.
Taubes challenges the conventional wisdom that says if we just eat less and exercise more we will lose weight.
He contends that carbohydrates - sweets, breads and fruit - and not fatty foods are to blame for our nation's rising obesity rate.
We're not fat because we're gluttons with no willpower who sit around watching too much TV, he says. Instead, we become couch potatoes because we are getting fat by eating too much pasta and rice, and too many cookies.
That diet brings on a vicious cycle of craving more of the same carbohydrates that sap our energy and pack on the pounds.
"It's the most important issue in medicine today," argues Taubes, a fellow at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. Being fat increases our risk of heart disease and diabetes, he says, as well as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Diets that require a steep drop in caloric consumption only allow us to drop pounds temporarily but are not a cure for obesity, he says.
