Gary Taubes at UC Berekey

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Gary Taubes gave a presentation at UC Berkeley called “The Quality of Calories; What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care.” If you have read Gary’s book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, it gives a bit more detail about the subject. If you have not, you’ll see why you should. It is 1 hour and 45 minutes long, but well worth the time: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216 One quote from the lecture shows very clearly how things went so terribly wrong and why it is so hard…

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Sweeteners

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I received a question about the characteristics of Splenda®, how it works in cooking, and why I use it in some of my recipes. In Carb Wars, I devoted several pages to the different kinds of sugar substitutes and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Since the subject may be of general interest, I will attempt to address it here. Splenda has been used for 20 plus years in some countries and doesn’t seem to have any harmful effects, at least not yet. It adds…

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Red Meat and Cancer

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March 30, 2007 – “Breast Cancer is another reason to limit beef,” reads the headline on an MSNBC story dated March 16, 2007. Similar headlines were featured in various newspapers in response to the release of a study analysis that suggested a link between red meat consumption and breast cancer. Researchers found no link between overall cancer rates, but when they looked at only those cancers that were dependent on estrogen and progesterone, they found that women who ate one to one and a half…

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Low Carb Diet Beats the Others

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On March 7, 2007 – Just as my book was rolling off the press, a new study comparing four different diets was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2007; 297: 969-977). All the major news sources featured headlines reflecting their own particular bias: “This Proves Atkins is Best Diet” said the London Times; the Seattle Times reported “Study: Women lost a bit more with Atkins.”  The scientists who designed the study expressed surprise that the Atkins diet came out on top…

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