Re: Review of New Taubes Book

In article
<8161d103-01b8-4a3c-bbd0-bf60bd753e31@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Kurt <kurtwheeling1965@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 28, 2:19 pm, "W. Baker" <wba...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No comments, but the review of Gay Taubes new book, which is a
popularization of Good Calories Bad Calories tht appeared in the NY Times
today.  I thought you might be interested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28zuger.html?ref=health

Wendy

"A few things to understand at the outset: First, despite the happy
fact that unlike many in this field, Mr. Taubes is not out to sell you
anything (other than his book),"

lol

"it is still a manifesto.
A manifesto implies a plan. Since nothing is resolved in the book, it is
more of an exposition of what we know, and how we came to know it.

Thus, though it is bursting with data, a
reader has no way of knowing whether other data has been overlooked or
minimized to support the author¹s points."

A generic criticism that could be made of any study, and not specific to
Taubes. Please feel free to inform us of any factual inadequacies that
you may find.

No doubt just about every book that subjectively discusses the best
diet for people to follow suffers from that kind of selective
presentation of data.

Could you please give us a concrete example from Taubes book to
illustrate your criticism.

Kurt

Your philosophical criticism of the book does nothing to address its
contents, which you obviously haven't read.

Taubes tackles a number of issues in the book, notably the history of
how we got where we are today with public health policies and dietary
recommendations, and why, even without good science to support our
policies as they developed, they were formed and promoted as fact to the
population at large.

Taubes doesn't just argue that what we're told is wrong, he provokes us
to examine our beliefs about a healthy diet by providing a wealth of
data from hundreds of studies reviewed in his research in writing the
book to argue the validity of the scientific process. That is, he
presents a compelling arguement that the supportive data used to
maintain the status quo of the diet-heart hypothesis and our current
dietary guidelines is not as sturdy as we're led to believe, and makes
the case that for well over a century there has been, all along
throughout the last century, the competing alternate theory, the
carbohydrate hypothesis, that has been ignored despite compelling data.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/january052009/israel_attacks_1-5-09.ph
p
.