Taubes addresses the history of meat eating,
and discusses the argument of eating
what we evolved to eat.

“The idea is that the longer a particular type of food
has been part of the human diet,
the more beneficial and less harmful it probably is
- the better adapted we become to that food.

And if some food is new to human diets,
or new in large quantities,
it’s likely that we haven’t yet had time to adapt,
and so it’s doing us harm.”

 Taubes says the diets of the hunter-gatherers
were very high in protein, high in fat,
and low in carbohydrates “by normal standards”.
All the most fattening:

 “carbohydrate-rich foods
…are very new additions to human diets.
Many of these foods have been available
for only the past few hundred years.

Corn and potatoes originated as New World
vegetables, and spread to Europe and Asia
only after Columbus.

the machine refining of flour and sugar
dates only back to the late nineteenth century.
Just two hundred years ago, we ate less
than a fifth of the sugar we eat today.”

Taubes goes on 

“Even the fruits we eat today are vastly different,
and now they’re available year-round,
rather than for only a few months of the year.

the kinds of fruit we eat today –
Fuji apples, Bartlett pears, navel oranges –
have been bred to be far juicier
and sweeter than the wild varieties,
and so, in effect to be far more fattening.”

He continues

“the modern foods that today constitute more than 60%
of all the calories in the typical Western diet
– including cereal grains, dairy products, beverages,
vegetable oils and dressings, and sugar and candy –
would have contributed none of the energy
in the typical hunter-gatherer diet.

If we believe that our genetic makeup
has a say in what constitutes a healthy diet,

then the likely reason that easily digestible
starches, refined carbohydrates (flour and white rice),
and sugars are fattening
is that we didn’t evolve to eat them,

and certainly not in the quantities
in which we eat them today.”

Next Taubes talks about the association
of chronic diseases with modern diets and lifestyle
and specifically with eating sugar and flour.
He says this concept was rejected because 

“it clashed with the idea that dietary fat
causes heart disease, which had become the
preferred hypothesis of nutritionists in the United States.

And those nutritionists were simply unaware
of the historical and geographical depth
of the evidence implicating sugar and flour.”

 Evolution has always been a difficult concept for me,
because I came from a family of strict “Creationists”,
and as a result, I never formed a personal interest
in Paleo Theories.

I confess that my mind is totally messed up in that area,
and therefore, truthfully, Hunter/gatherer statements
are fairly meaningless to me, and do little to convince
me that meat is more common to humans than plants.

However, I do understand and agree
that fruit is now bred to be sweeter,
and its year round availability
became the case only in recent history.

Also I don’t see how anyone can disagree
with the fact that the ready availability of
refined flour and sugar is also relatively recent.

I am impressed by the fact that
so many societies free of the “diseases of civilization”
began suffering from them,
only after incorporating sugar and flour into their diets.

Taubes discusses how carbohydrates were viewed in History. 

 In 1825 Brillat-Savarin wrote about the cause and prevention of obesity.
Regarding the Cause: 

Quote:
“the roots of obesity were obvious.
The first was a natural predisposition to fatten.

The second was the starches and flours
which man uses as the base of his daily nourishment.
….and that starch produces this effect
more quickly and surely when it is used with sugar.”

Regarding the Cure:

Quote:
“a more or less rigid abstinence from
everything that is starchy or floury
will lead to the lessening of weight.”

Taubes says very little that he has said so far is new.

“That includes the idea that carbohydrates cause obesity
and that abstinence from starches, flour, and sugars
is the obvious method of cure and prevention.”

The conclusion of Brillat-Savarin in 1825 has been
repeated and reinvented numerous times since then. 
 Up through the 1960s it was the conventional wisdom
and what our grandparents instinctively believed was true.

In the 1960’s calories-in/calories-out took hold,
and those prior diets were labeled faddish and dangerous.

“In 1973 the American Medical Association described them
as bizarre concepts of nutrition and dieting .”

Taubes finds this a mystifying trend   because the notion
of the fattening carbohydrate has been around
for most of the last two hundred years.

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina written in mid 1870s contains

Quote:
“he had very quickly been brought down to the required weight
of one hundred and sixty pounds, but he still had to avoid
gaining weight, and he avoided starchy foods and desserts.”

 Saul Bellow’s Herzog written in 1964 tells about a character
who avoids a candy bar

Quote:
“thinking of the money he had spent on new clothes
which would not fit if he ate carbohydrates.”

Taubes says that this is what doctors believed
and told their obese patients prior to the 1960s,
and recites examples from the 1800s through 1950.

He quotes the obesity diet published in the famous
1951 textbook, The Practice of Endocrinology.

Quote:
“Foods to be avoided:

1. Bread, and everything else made with flour…
2. Cereals, including breakfast cereals and milk puddings.
3. Potatoes and all other white root vegetables.
4. Foods containing much sugar
5. All sweets…

You can eat as much as you like of the following foods:

1. Meat, fish, birds
2. All green vegetables
3. Eggs, dried or fresh
4. Cheese
5. Fruit, if unsweetened or sweetened with saccharin,
.......except bananas and grapes. “

 In 1946 Dr Spock’s Baby and Child Care he counseled

Quote:
“The amount of plain, starchy foods (cereals, breads, potatoes)
taken is what determines, in the case of most people,
how much weight they gain or lose”

That sentence remained in every edition for the next 50 years.

 In 1963 British Doctors, Davidson and Passmore, published
Human Nutrition and Dietetics, which was considered the
definitive source of dietary wisdom for a generation of
British medial practitioners, wrote

Quote:
“The intake of foods rich in carbohydrate should be
drastically reduced since over-indulgence in such foods
is the most common cause of obesity.”

Taubes goes on to talk about results of research
on the effectiveness of diets restricting carbohydrates
between 1936 and the 1970s.

“the results were invariable the same.
The dieters lost weight with little effort
and felt little or no hunger while doing so.”

 Taubes says that despite these results,
which were confirmed in studies around the world,

“By the 1960s, obesity had come to be perceived
as an eating disorder,
and so the actual science of fat regulation
…wasn’t considered relevant (as it still isn’t)…

This (the science of fat regulation) simply ran contrary
to what had now come to be accepted as the obvious reason
why fat people get fat to begin with,
that they eat too much.”

Also the belief that dietary fat causes heart disease
and that carbohydrates are “heart healthy” started in the 1960s,
and this clashed with the idea that carbohydrates make us fat.

“This is why the USDA Food Pyramid put fats and oils at the top,
to be “used sparingly”; meat was near the top because
meat, fish, and fowl have considerable fat; and fat-free carbohydrates
- - or fattening carbohydrates (as they used to be known)
were at the bottom, as the staples of a supposedly healthy diet.”

 In 1965 a New York Times article

“quoted Harvard’s Jean Mayer as claiming that to
prescribe carbohydrate-restricted diets to the public
was “the equivalent of mass murder”.

The Times explained that to lose weight, one has to cut down
on excess calories; and because these diets restrict
carbohydrates, they compensate by allowing more fat, and
it’s the high-fat nature of the diets
that prompted the mass murder accusation.

Taubes says

 
“The belief that dietary fat causes heart disease
led directly to the idea that carbohydrates prevent it.
By the early 1980s, Jane Brody of the Times…
was telling us we need to eat more carbohydrates
and advocating starches and bread as diet foods. "

“Not only is eating pasta at the height of fashion,
she wrote,
“it can help you lose weight.”

Taubes says he hopes this logic reached
the pinnacle of absurdity,   when in 1995
the American Heart Association suggested that
we eat virtually anything – even candy and sugar –
as long as it’s low in fat.

He says

“This advice and the shunning of low-carbohydrate
weight-loss diets might make sense if dietary fat
did indeed cause heart disease, as we’ve been
hearing now for fifty years. …But it doesn’t.”

 I think this information is true.
What Taubes says about the history of Carbohydrates
coincides with what I lived through
from an infant in the 1940s through the current time.

The original WW diet of the early 70s came at the end of the era
where everyone understood that starches needed to be limited to control weight
but also at the beginning of the scare over saturated fat and heart disease.

Gradually succeeding versions of WW allowed more carbs but were still very calorie restricted
which probably still limited carbs -- though not as much as before.

In the early 1970s when I first joined Weight Watchers,
the severely restricted sugars and starches just seemed appropriate,
because...of course...I knew it had to be that way.

As a child, my mother refused to serve bread with dinner (except on special occasions)
if we had another starch like potatoes or pasta,
and I remember her saying to me again and again
that eating corn and potatoes together (which was one of my favorites)
was "the same as eating two pieces of bread".

What I remember was a new concept from WW in the early 70s,
was that I could only have protein during a normal mealtime (3 a day),
and never within a snack, and fat or fatty protein was seriously limited.

That was the start of the popularity of water-pack tuna.
I wasn't too surprised that I had to remove the skin and fat
from animal protein, but only around 2 oz of cheese a week,
and only 2 or 3 eggs a week,
that felt harsh.

Also a new concept for me in early WW, was that all Snacks had to be carbs...
(like vegetables or a very small amount of fruit),
and no protein was allowed between meals.

 According to Taubes,

“Any diet that succeeds does so because
the dieter restricts fattening carbohydrates,
whether by explicit instruction or not.

…those who lose on fat on a diet
do so because of what they are not eating
-- the fattening carbohydrates –
not because of what they are eating. “

When we go on any serious weight-loss plan,
whether Diet or Exercise, we always make changes
in what we eat – no matter what instructions we get. 
 We stop eating the most fattening carbohydrates, because
they are the most obviously wrong foods for weight-loss.
We cut down on sodas, beer, fruit juice;
get rid of candy bars, desserts, donuts, cinnamon buns.
Starches like potatoes, rice, white bread, and pasta
are often replaced by green vegetables, salads,
or at least whole grains.

Taubes says,

“Even the very low-fat diet made famous by Dean Ornish
restricts all refined carbohydrates, including sugar,
white rice, and white flour.
This alone could explain any benefits that result.”

Taubes continues.

“If we try to cut any significant number of calories from our diet,
we’ll be cutting the total amount of carbohydrates we consume as well.
This is just arithmetic.

He says

“any time we try to diet by any of the conventional methods,
and any time we decide to “eat healthy” as it’s currently defined,
we will remove the most fattening carbohydrates from the diet,
and if we lose fat,
this will almost assuredly be the reason why.”

Taubes states

“when calorie-restricted diets (and exercise plans) fail,
as they typically do, the reason is that they restrict
something other than the foods that make us fat.

They restrict fat and protein,
which have no long-term effect
on insulin and fat deposition
but are required for energy
and for the rebuilding of cells and tissues.

They starve the entire body of nutrients and energy,
or semi-starve it,
rather than targeting the fat tissue specifically.

 Any weight that might be lost
can be maintained only as long as
the dieter can withstand the semi-starvation,

and even then the fat cells will be working
to recoup the fat they’re losing,
just as the muscle cells are trying to obtain protein
to rebuild and maintain their function,
and the total amount of energy the dieter expends
will be reduced to compensate.”

Taubes ends this chapter by stating

“Weight-loss regimens succeed
when they get rid of the fattening carbohydrates in the diet;
they fail when they don’t.

What the regiment must do, in essence,
is reregulate fat tissue
so that it releases the calories
it has accumulated to excess.

Any changes the dieter makes
that don’t work toward that goal…
will starve the body in other ways…
and the resultant hunger will lead to failure.”

 I find this Concept both fascinating and compelling.
Looking back on my own lifetime,
and the multitude of calorie reduced diets I’ve endured.
Is it possible that every time I lost weight 
it was actually due to carbohydrate restriction?
Even though none of them were purposely “low-carb” diets?

 An examination of two of the most drastic diets in my history
shows this could be true.
In the 1980s I did a medically-supervised liquid formula diet only,
for 6 + months which consisted of a protein shake three times a day.
Daily calories were between 300 to 500,
but when thinking about it, I realize that also,
carbs would have been under 10.

 I lost about 90 lbs, but regained it all plus about 40 lbs more
within six months of resuming a “normal balanced diet”,
During that 6 months I dieted far more than I binged,
and although I didn’t track my food, based on my recollection,
my total 6 month food intake probably didn’t average
more than 2000 calories a day during that time period. 
 I lost from 271 to 160 lbs, for a total of 111 lbs, during the first year
after my Weight-Loss-Surgery, because I was physically unable
to eat more than 500 calories a day.

At that time I ate primarily sugar-free yogurt, lean meat, poultry and fish,
eggs, cheese. My body would tolerate very little fat, and even fewer carbs.
Green Veggies were too bulky to eat very many.
Sometimes I could tolerate a few bites ofcomplex carbs.

If I ate more than a bite or two of refined carbs,
I became so sick I had to lie down.
(Milk and normal ice cream still make me feel sick).
So….during that weight-loss period, along with calories,
carbohydrates were also severely restricted.
After a few years, my body began to tolerate carbs,
and could also handle more food, and I began eating more.
I began gaining weight, and for the next 10 years or so,
I had to frequently diet to maintain my weight around 190 lbs. 
 Prior to reading Taubes,
it never occurred to me that while I was restricting calories,
I was also restricting carbs, and I find it interesting
that both of those personal examples
will fit together with Taubes’ above-stated concepts.

My own experience of this past 5 years
of maintaining my current weight makes me
completely agree with Taubes when he says

"weight-loss can be maintained
only as long as the dieter
can withstand the semi-starvation,
and even then the fat cells will be working
to recoup the fat they’re losing"

Taubes begins

“If you’re predisposed to get fat
and want to be as lean as you can be
without compromising your health,
you have to restrict carbohydrates
and so keep your blood sugar and insulin levels low.

…you don’t lose fat because you cut calories;
you lose fat because you cut out the foods
that make you fat – the carbohydrates.

 If you get down to a weight you like,
and then add those foods back into the diet,
you’ll get fat again.

That only some people get fat from eating carbohydrates 
 (just as only some get lung cancer from smoking cigarettes)

doesn’t change the fact that if you’re one of the ones who do,
you’ll only lose fat and keep it off if you avoid these foods.”

Carbohydrates make us fat and keep us fat,
and those foods are the ones we’re likely to want the most
and would never want to live without.

Taubes says this is no coincidence.

“It’s clear from animal research
that the foods animals prefer to eat in excess
are those that most quickly supply energy to the cells –
easily digestible carbohydrates.”

Another factor is how hungry we are,
because the hungrier we are, the better foods taste.
Taubes says that insulin works to increase our feelings of hunger,
and he provides details of how this works in the body.

He says

“This palatability-by-blood-sugar-and-insulin response
is …exaggerated in people who are fat or predisposed to get fat.
And the fatter they get, the more they’ll crave carbohydrate-rich foods,
because their insulin will be more effective at stashing fat
and protein in their muscles and fat tissue,
where they can’t be used for fuel.”

 Taubes says that once you are resistant to insulin,
there is insulin coursing through your veins
during most of the day, and during those periods
the only fuel you can burn is glucose from carbohydrates.

“The insulin, remember, is working to keep protein and fat
and even glycogen…safely stashed away for later.
It’s telling our cells that there is blood sugar in excess to be burned,
but there’s not.

Even if you eat fat and protein – a hamburger without the bun,
or a hunk of cheese – the insulin will work to store these nutrients
rather than allow your body to burn them for fuel.
You will have little desire to eat these,

at least without some carbohydrate-rich bread as well,
because your body, at the moment,
has little interest in burning it for fuel.”

 He says sweets are a special case.

“First, the unique metabolic effects of fructose in the liver,
combined with the insulin-stimulating effect of glucose,
might be enough to induce cravings in those predisposed to fatten.

When you eat sugar…
it triggers a response in the brain…the “reward center”…
All food does this to some extent,
because that’s what the reward system..evolved to do;
reinforce behaviors (eating and sex) that benefit the species.

But sugar seems to hijack the signal to an unnatural degree,
just as cocaine and nicotine do.
If we believe the animal research,
then sugar and HFCS are addictive in the same way that drugs are
and for much the same biochemical reasons.”

Taubes ends the chapter by saying that like smoking,

“the cigarettes that give us lung cancer
also make us crave the cigarettes that give us lung cancer
the foods that make us fat 
also make us crave precisely the foods that make us fat.”

Well, I know a lot about craving the foods that make me fat,
and I completely believe that statement.
I also like Taubes comparison of
cigarettes and lung cancer to the carb cravings.

Everything Taubes says here makes sense to me,
and yet, I have difficulty believing that it is carbohydrates
instead of calories that make me fat.
It is difficult to overcome the ”conventional wisdom”
in my mind that tells me that calories really matter.

I’ve moved to the position that perhaps restricting carbs
will help me lose and maintain weight,
but at this point,
I just am not able to believe this would allow me to
stop restricting calories as well.
My own prior knowledge and experience says otherwise.

I’m still personally thinking calories-in/calories out
is at least a partial truth that belongs somewhere in this concept,
and that maybe a practical application combining
both concepts is necessary for the bodies of some people.
There are those who believe “calories-in/calories-out”
is the simple truth,
and say that Low-Carb eating is simply:

“a way to be satisfied on a low-calorie healthy diet
by the clever use of
reduced carbs to control appetite spikes,
and increased fat to add satiety.”

 I think Taubes clearly shows that low-carb issues
are far more complicated than that,
but my response to that above-quoted statement is:
even if that’s totally how and why it works,
if it would let me maintain my current weight
without feeling so hungry,
I’d be fine with that..

 Being born with a tendency toward fat is beyond your control.

Taubes says

“It’s carbohydrates that ultimately determines insulin secretion
and insulin that drives the accumulation of body fat.

Not all of us get fat when we eat carbohydrates,
but for those of us who do get fat,
the carbohydrates are to blame;
the fewer carbohydrates we eat, the leaner we will be.”

He compares this with cigarettes.

“Not every longtime smoker gets lung cancer.
Only one in six men will, and one in nine women.
But for those who do get lung cancer,
cigarette smoke is …the most common cause.

In a world without cigarettes,
lung cancer would be a rare disease, as it once was.
In a world without carbohydrate-rich diets,
obesity would be a rare condition as well.”

 Taubes says a crucial point is that not all foods
containing carbohydrates are equally fattening.
The most fattening foods are the ones with the greatest effect
on our Blood Sugar. He then talks about Blood Sugar issues,
and the Glycemic Index.
Taubes thinks fruit is “worrisome” because

“it is sweet to the taste precisely because it contains a type of
sugar known as fructose, and fructose is uniquely fattening
as carbohydrates go.

Fruit doesn’t have to be processed before we eat it;
it’s fat-free and cholesterol-free; it has vitamins and antioxidants,
and so, by this logic, it must be good for us. Maybe so.
But if we’re predisposed to put on fat, it’s a good bet
that most fruit will make the problem worse, not better.”

He says 

“The very worst foods for us…are sugars – sucrose (table sugar)
and high-fructose corn syrup in particular.
I refer to both of them as sugars,
because they are effectively identical.
Sucrose—white granulated sugar—is half fructose and half glucose.
HFCS is 55 % fructose, 42% glucose, and 3% other carbohydrates."

 Taubes then talks about the way the body digests the carbohydrates
in sugars and starches, and the problems that occur in our bodies.

He says that although fructose has no immediate effect on Blood Sugar
and Insulin, that -- over time – it is a likely cause of insulin resistance.

“It is quite possible that if we never ate these sugars
we might never become fat or diabetic, even if the bulk of our diet
were still starchy carbohydrates and flour.

This would explain why some of the world’s poorest populations
live on carbohydrate-rich diets and don’t get fat and diabetic,
while others aren’t so lucky. The ones that don’t (or at least didn’t),
like the Japanese and Chinese were the ones that traditionally
ate very little sugar. Once you do start to fatten, if you want to stop
the process and reverse it, these sugars have to be the first to go.”

 I do agree that tolerances of carbohydrates differ between people.
In fact, I find all of these Concepts very believable.
Many of them I’ve experienced in my own life,
and have frequently observed in others as well.

I think it’s interesting the way that Taubes believes
that many bodies change over time
due to exposure to excessive carbohydrates.
This makes a lot of sense to me.