THE CASE FOR KETO
Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating
by Gary Taubes
Want to lose weight? Then eat lots of meat, the much-vaunted ancestral diet. “This book is a work of journalism masquerading as a self-help book,” writes science and nutrition journalist Taubes at the outset, explaining that he does not concern himself with specific recipes so much as nutritional science. For some people, a diet of grains and tubers is fine, but for most of us, specific categories of food—particularly carbohydrates—create a “hormonal milieu” in the body that serves to trap calories in the form of fat for later use rather than burning them off as fuel in the short term. The caloric equivalent of a single almond per day is enough to foster a 50-pound weight gain over a couple of decades, which means that a diet that eschews carbohydrates is the only way the heavy among us are ever going to lose weight. Taubes examines the history of obesity and responses to it, from its being characterized as the product of a mental disorder to the counsel of “almost invariably lean people” that the trick is simply not to eat so much. Instead, because people are metabolically different from one another, one person can eat exactly the same food in exactly the same quantity as another, and one will gain weight and the other not. The deeper science concerns how the body produces and uses insulin; “eating less and exercising…can be inefficient ways of lowering insulin levels,” writes the author. Instead, only a keto diet will do, keto meaning ketosis, the burning of fat as fuel. Moderation doesn’t work for most people, argues Taubes: It’s an all-or-nothing commitment to eating meat, some cheese, and cruciferous vegetables—and no sugary foods, beans, spaghetti, and the like, a diet that, for some people, would make life not worth living. Solid science and energetic writing make the author’s bitter pill easier to swallow.