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Serious Reads: Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes
@MartyMoon, yes, but this also doesn't mean the Chinese were of optimal health when subsisting on grain. Meat-fed Mongolians were able to conquer so much of China because it was easy to cut cities off from grain supplies and the Mongolians were consistently appalled by the poor health of the people living in Chinese cities.
@AnthonyC: The first law of thermodynamics cannot be applied to our bodies because we are not a closed system i.e. we are not static objects. There are very complex hormonal and metabolic responses and pathways that react very differently to different foods, and not all calories get metabolized in the same way.
Serious Reads: Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes
Also, the widespread and daily consumption of white rice in East Asia is more recent than you think, particularly as the primary component of meals. Rice is an extremely labor and resource intensive crop, and even when my dad was a kid living in rural China, it was a luxury food not always available. He was the youngest, so he got the rice while his older sisters ate sweet potatoes. He and all his sisters are now diabetic. I'm not going to blame the carbs, but it's also a fallacy to assume all us Asians are little, petite, pinnacles of health. Nutritional deficiencies have been plaguing China for decades, and now with the adoption of a more Western diet (which, contrary to the popular narrative involves way more processed food, wheat, and corn than fresh meat) China is poised to surpass America in heart disease and diabetes rates.
Serious Reads: Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes
A) Whole wheat is empty calories B) not all carbs are created equal and other factors such as inflammatory responses to foods are a huge factor and C) how are you dismissing a book before you've read it or even bothered to contest the science? I NEED MY CARBS NOM NOM NOM SHUT UP CARB HATERS RAAAWR HUNGRY!!!!
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Ok, here's what my main thing is:
Why are people so fervent in their belief that rice and wheat and other grains are necessary in our diet? I'm actually not a low-carber, I eat a lot of sweet potatoes and some white, and I even eat some rice and corn, but how can you possibly believe that a tortilla is more nutritious than a yam? How can you believe a slice of whole-wheat toast is more nutritious than a steak?
Taubes merely reports on the fallacy of the calories in calories out assumption and the Lipid Hypothesis. I think his work is vital, even if you don't agree with all of it. Hell, I'm an avid fan of Robb Wolf, and their were disagreements between Taubes and Wolf on the recent Paleolithic Solution podcast.
I just really can't understand why grain apologists insist that grain is necessary and even healthy! It's all filler! It may have allowed for greater populations and it may have kept people barely alive, but there's no compelling argument that it's necessary.
Even Taubes would admit that quality of carbs is as important if not more than the amount of carbs.