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.

Nina Teicholz has done a superb job of telling the story of how the low fat dogma of the past 50+ years prevented true scientific inquiry from taking place and led to a national health disaster that is almost beyond comprehension. This book will not only upend everything you thought you knew regarding the relationship between fat and human health, but it will also make you question every media headline purporting to convey the latest discovery on the effects of specific foods on human health. You will never again take one of these sensationalized announcements at face value. It is good to know that not all journalists are cogs in the wheel of corporate power. With this brilliant work of investigative journalism, Ms. Teicholz has proven herself to be a modern muckraker of the highest order. This book should be required reading for every senior high school student before graduating. Thank you, Nina!

This is my favourite book. Ever!

And I'm the daughter of a librarian so I've read a lot!

The scale of research and science Nina has reviewed is nothing short of gargantuan. Every chapter is compelling & shocking in what she reviews about the atrocious history of nutritional medicine.

I love this book (& Nina's subsequent work to change the US dietary guidelines) so much that I travelled to Colorado mountains from Australia this week to meet her!

I've also totally changed my diet to low carb high fat, lost 13 kgs (26lbs), stopped my terrible knee pain, migraines, pre-diabetes blood sugars, headaches, eczema and mild depression. And now I'm super happy as I've just bought 2 pairs of US sized 2 jeans!

Our fear of healthy natural fats has made us sick, inflamed & fat. You have to get this book if you want to know why!

This is probably one of the most important books I have read in the past 10 years. At 48 years old, I have grown up being told that saturated fats were bad and that we should eat mostly carbohydrates (whole grains, rice, pasta, etc). It turns out that the science just doesn't support that. This is an extraordinarily well-written book by an author without an agenda. I didn't read this with a goal of losing weight as I am pretty fit and exercise every day. I have had problems with PVCs (extra abnormal heart beats) and high blood pressure though. Since eating a higher fat diet and limiting carbs to just dinner for the past 3-4 months, the PVCs have gone away and my blood pressure has come down. My level of HDL (good cholesterol) went up and triglycerides went down. I also lost 7-8 pounds. More importantly, I feel better - more energy and sustained mental clarity throughout the day. I would also recommend "Grain Brain" by Perlmutter.