The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet Kindle Edition

Okay, look. I'm about as biased a reviewer as you can get. I read Gary Taubes' Good Calories Bad Calories in 2008 and was so moved by it that I radically overhauled my diet and started writing and researching about nutrition and obesity as a hobby.

So when I had the opportunity to review an advance copy of Nina Teicholz's Big Fat Surprise, I assumed I would enjoy it and agree with her conclusions... but I was in no way expecting to be so surprised and delighted by it... and so infuriated by the nasty nutrition politics that she exposes.

Could a single man, Ancel Benjamin Keys, indirectly be responsible for more mayhem than any other figure from the 20th century?

Was Keys' so-called “diet-heart hypothesis” -- which convinced a generation to eschew eating fat and turn instead to sugar, carbohydrate and processed vegetable oils -- one of the most deadly ideas of modern civilization?

These and other troubling thoughts can’t help but bubble to mind as you read Teicholz's nutritional thriller.

I’ll get to the juicy details in a second. But first, the overview:

In the middle of the 20th century, thanks to Ancel Keys and several other arrogant researchers, we began to fear dietary fat as an agent of heart disease and other ills. So we revised our diet to be “healthier” and wound up, ironically, suffering through profound epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases as a result.

Teicholz’s lucid summary of this disaster, The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease, was the #1 most read editorial in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal. Her piece prompted conservative pundit, Rush Limbaugh, to do a lengthy expose on his talk show about the low fat diet myth.

I hesitate to be optimistic, but we may be witnessing a wave of mainstream support for Teicholz and Taubes’ signature ideas about nutrition and health.

In addition to Limbaugh’s harangue against Keys and the low fat diet, Dr. Oz — arguably the most influential doctor on TV — recently admitted that he was “wrong” about saturated fat being dangerous. Guest appearances by Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. David Perlmutter on Oz’s show also attest to Oz’s change of heart.

Meanwhile, documentarian Morgan Spurlock (of Supersize Me fame) recently admitted: “I am not eating carbohydrates, no bread, no pasta, no sugar. I feel better than I ever have.”

Katie Couric’s new documentary, Fed Up, which opens this weekend (as I write this review), also calls B.S. on the low fat high sugar diet and questions the idea that all calories are equal.

And a massive meta-analysis of 72 studies published in February in the Annals of Internal Medicine ,which exonerated saturated fat in no uncertain terms, is just the latest in a growing fusillade of attacks on the conventional “eat less fat and more carbs” nonsense.

We’ve still got a long road ahead, though, and many misconceptions persist. That’s one of the reasons Teicholz’s book is so important.

Interview with Jeremiah Stamler

Stamler was a colleague and contemporary of Keys, and he and Keys advocated aggressively for the diet-heart hypothesis. Stamler led the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), a $115 million dollar experiment carried out from 1973-1982. It was a catastrophic failure for the diet-heart hypothesis, as Teicholz describes, yet its failure changed nothing about how the nutrition establishment operated.

In an interview with Stamler, she pointed out the following paradox: a 1997 follow up to MRFIT found that the treatment group had higher rates of lung cancer than the control group did, despite the fact that 21% of the treatment group had quit smoking compared with 6% of the control group. Stamler responded: “I don’t know! That could be a chance find… it’s just one of those findings. Troublesome. Unexpected. Not explained. Not rationalized!”

Fascinating stuff.

Slaying Dean Ornish’s Cherished Study Claiming That His Diet “Reversed” Heart Disease

Teicholz also interviewed Dean Ornish, the most celebrated modern advocate of low fat diets, and analyzed the study that made him a nutritional star. A 1998 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) helped make Ornish a household name. But this study was PLENTY flawed and got outsized pressed.

Teicholz writes: “Curious about the findings, I called Key Lance Gould, director of cardiology at the University of Texas, who helped Ornish launch his research career and was a co-author with Ornish on the JAMA papers…. On the phone, I could almost hear Gould’s incredulity over how Ornish promoted their study results. ‘Most people do a study and get one paper. Dean does one study and gets a bunch of papers. There’s a certain skill in marketing a small little piece of data. He’s really a genius at PR.’”

Fascinating Critical Reappraisal of Olive Oil and the Mediterranean Diet

We all “know” olive oil is one of the healthiest substances known to humanity. Right? Well, how did these beliefs develop, and is there good science to back them up? Teicholz’s explosive expose on the origins of the Mediterranean Diet and our (modern) fetishization for olive oil will blow your mind.

Here’s a nice gem: “…when [famous Harvard University nutrition professor] Walter Willett unveiled the Mediterranean pyramid in 1993, no controlled clinical trials of the diet had ever been done.”

The Scary Rise of Soybean Oil

Teicholz recounts the bizarre story of multimillionare, Philip Sokolof, who bought a full page ad in the New York Times in 1988 trumpeting “THE POISONING OF AMERICA” by saturated fats.

She also reveals a deeply disturbing graph published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showing how soybean oil consumption has skyrocketed. “Americans now eat over 1,000 times more soybean oil than they did in 1909, the biggest change in the American diet.”

I could go on. The book is a brilliant whodunnit, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Stop. Do not pass go: get your copy NOW.

The Big Fat Surprise is not a diet book or a book about dieting, though you will learn a lot about what you should and shouldn't eat if you read it. It's more of an exposé on how today's diet recommendations came to be and why they're so out of whack with reality and actual scientific research.

The basic conclusion is that we should eat more fat and protein and fewer carbohydrates. That will help keep us healthy and lean.

Important points the author brings out:

- Our misunderstanding and misuse of cholesterol measurements often drives treatments and diet changes that are unnecessary and counterproductive.

- Carbohydrates, even complex carbs (like those found in whole wheat products), are unhealthy when eaten in large quantities.

- Overall, a diet based on meat (fatty is better than lean), eggs, and full-fat dairy products, including real butter, is better for you than one based on breads, cereals, potatoes, corn, rice, and sugary products (even fruit). This type of high-fat diet will also help you keep your weight down, believe or not.

- Overuse of vegetable oils in restaurants, especially for deep-frying, could be especially bad for our health.

As the author points out, we tend to jump to conclusions based on hype and promotion instead of science and long-term research. The Big Fat Surprise brings to light the results of the best, most current research and lays it out for you so you can make your own decisions about what, and what not, to eat. I'm having bacon & eggs!

Presented clearly and copiously documented. I have unwittingly been testing the main hypotheses in this book for years by eating a relatively high fat low carb diet - not as part of any "diet" but simply because the foods I liked to eat fit this profile. I always thought I would start taking the "official" dietary advice if I ever started gaining weight and occasionally wondered why I never did. Now I know! I am a 67 year old, 5' 11", 160 lb male with low cholesterol and normal blood pressure who wears the same 30W 32L size pants I have been wearing for 45 years.

I told my athletic 28 yr. old "foodie" daughter about the book, and since abandoning her "grains and fruits" obsession for whole milk, prime rib, and sushi she has lost 15 lbs, gained strength, and loves the fact that she is "not constantly hungry" anymore.

I found it fascinating to read those reviews by citizens who see this book as some sort of scam or nonsense.
I respect their right and ability to make choices, as we all do. Some choices in whatever direction can heal us and some can kill us. Perfect truth is very hard to come by, no matter what the field.
I choose to believe that the author has made a clear and careful case for her research on healthful food, despite the "experts" who are as brilliant as the blind professors who examined an elephant and then each described it.(An old and ancient Sufi story).
This may turn out to be the most truth-based study of what looks to be more truth than any fiction. Sir William Osler, a great 1900s physician said, "I'd rather be wrong with Plato than "right" with Aristotle."
Aside from medical science, it is pure logic to think that less carbohydrate and more protein and fat makes sense. A similar issue is the Cholesterol Myth - five books by 4 physicians and one health expert have carefully studied the original data and find most of it presented as scientific fact when it is hypothesis. I do not claim we should put aside all experts, but they might and can be "wrong" or incorrect. The history of medicine is full of sincere but incorrect findings, including the latest claims by the experts.
Any way, this is a profound and challenging book that deserves a careful reading 2-3 times, and then make your choices.