Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes is a fantastic book so far. Halfway through, I am fairly certain it could be retitled “Good Science, Bad Science” or perhaps “Good Science, Bad Science, Crappy Politics.” I’d say that you wouldn’t believe the politics that affect your food, but knowing the sort of discerning, intelligent folks who read this site, uh, you probably would. And do. And weep, just like me.
As we know, it’s not just food industry and availability that political climate affects, but national dietary policy and recommendations. Right here (in this book) is where we realize that we can’t trust anyone but ourselves and (maybe) a few well-chosen researchers. Disheartening. Discouraging. Infuriating!
The problem is, no one can give you a straight line on nutrition because no one really has a straight line on nutrition. Scientists trust other scientists to provide them with accurate environmental information surrounding their preferred subject, because no scientist can get the truth about everything on her own. She has to stand on the backs of the researchers who went before, and she has to assume that the information she’s been given is reasonably correct. Otherwise, she’d have to start from scratch. I’m sure there are scads of examples where this works just fine. Taubes tells us a story of where it didn’t.
Taubes’ book explains how massive fumbles get made. So far, he’s told us how science mistook the merits of a low-fat nutritional regimen for the merits of a regimen low in refined carbohydrates. The intrigue is insane. I never read War and Peace, but I bet it’s a little bit like this. Dense. Informationally intense!
Of course, I can’t trust Taubes, either—not exclusively. Not even when I’m this grateful to him for further opening my eyes to the vagaries of food politics! (I like him and all, don’t get me wrong. And I love the book!) But I can make a judgment about where to get my information and how to rate my sources in a reasonable manner. I’m quite fond of Michael Pollan, and he has good things to say about Gary Taubes. Halfway through Taubes’ book, I’m pretty impressed with his attention to detail and follow-through and thorough (-seeming, as I am not a nutrition scientist) grasp of the history and circumstances surrounding the arguments of fat and cholesterol and refined carbohydrates. A lot of the stuff he says makes me blink in disbelief, and much of it leaves me unsurprised. Yeah. People can get mixed-up. Especially people with important roles to play, especially people entrusted to make policy that affects hundreds of thousands of others.
What does this mean? Don’t trust the folks in charge? Ignore the rules? Take down the government? Well… probably not. Everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about a mistake made on a grand scale. (This is NOT an excuse for some of the folks Taubes writes about in the book, but it’s not an indictment either. Who knows what they could have chosen to do differently? It doesn’t matter now.) We can, however, be more hands-on when it comes to decisions made about our health and well-being. We can do our own science in our own ways. We can absorb information and test it, instead of parroting it and calling it canon without real knowledge of whether it’s true or not. We can listen to our bodies and learn to make decisions that affect us positively, instead of fooling ourselves into believing that someone else will always know better, someone else will always take care of us.
Someone else won’t always take care of us. Not only won’t, but can’t, because we are the only souls truly capable of being stewards of our own lives. That counts in health, it counts in work, it counts everywhere across the board. You need to take care of you. If that means climbing a few learning curves and paying attention to the world around you (and the responses within you), so be it. Get going.
If we don’t start paying attention and taking care of ourselves, we’ll just keep getting sick and dying and trying to blame it on somebody else.
And that’s just stupid.
Tagged as: "Good Calories Bad Calories", books, Gary Taubes, health, nutrition
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