Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It | Gary Taubes | Talks at Google

Talks at Google · 217K views · 2011 · 1:27:51

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Nutrition & diet scienceMedicine & infectious diseasetalkdated

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended in diet and weight-loss threads as the accessible case for the carbohydrate-insulin view of obesity.

What it is

Gary Taubes presents the argument of his book Why We Get Fat to Googlers in 2011. He claims the type of calories matters more than the count, challenges calories-in-calories-out thinking and criticizes the low-fat dietary consensus.

Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2011 to 2022.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec nosequel · 2012-01 · on “Learning to Eat Well and Stay Healthy”

Actually you are most likely wrong. There is really good evidence that the number of calories don't matter and that the type of calories are everything. People associate the number of calories as mattering because they change other things at the same time. Please watch videos from Gary Taubes who wrote "Good Calories Bad Calories" and "Why we get fat". Here's his google talk: [this video] On a personal note, I lost 40 lbs and I eat far more calories now than I did before. Open you mind for a bit and really watch that video, you might be convinced that what you think about calories are all wrong. I certainly changed what I thought was true as fact.

Strong rec TomGullen · 2013-02 · on “What Does 200 Calories Look Like?”

msluyter correctly points to the Inuits as a good case against what you've said. Their diet consists pretty much entirely fat and meat yet they have lower heart disease and rates of cancer. [LINK] Pretty strange how their not keeling over from heart disease! Perhaps the traditional view of fat is wrong. Highly recommend you watch this amazing lecture by Garry Taubes at Google: [this video] He also brings a lot of other eye opening case studies to light such as obesity in Pima Indians during a famine.

Recommends simsimsalabim · 2011-12 · on “The Fat Trap: Our Bodies Are Fighting Against Us”

The linked pdf makes a number of factual errors. it incorrectly suggests that ketogenic don't encourage eating lots of vegetables and low-sugar fruits. It also trys to twist "not all calories are the same" into "you can eat as much as you want". and of course, trans fats should always be avoided. but you should really decide for yourself: [this video] [LINK]

Recommends nosequel · 2012-01 · on “Learning to Eat Well and Stay Healthy”

Please explain how countless cultures who are severely malnutritioned and live off of less than 600 calories a day are obese? There are no credible studies that are currently being done that can answer those questions with calories in / calories out. Because it is simply wrong. Taubes google talk [this video]

Recommends TelmoMenezes · 2013-07 · on “How I have lost over 100 pounds and don’t know how”

The problem here is that mainstream nutrition "science" is also a fad. It is also a dramatic example on how the Internet + an incentive can produce better Science than the traditional grant (and lobby system). Many of the traditional dogmas of nutrition have recently come intro question: the idea that eating cholesterol is what increases cholesterol in your arteries, the idea that salt is bad for you, the idea that fiber is good for you and many others. Regarding ketogenic diets, there are so many results and it seems to work so much better than what "they" have been telling us that the idea that this is a "fad" starts to sound a bit silly. Actually, some proponents of ketogenic diets are ba

Recommends crusso · 2013-07 · on “How I have lost over 100 pounds and don’t know how”

Another user already posted this link. Here's tons of evidence and someone wondering why we've ignored that evidence for so long. [this video]

Recommends TomGullen · 2013-10 · on “Sweden becomes the first country to reject low-fat diet dogma”

> The only issue with sugars are the null effect on satiety and promotion of binge eating. > sugars make it easy to overeat Those are issues, for sure! And great reasons why when dieting, a good foundation is exclusion of carbs. But that's only scratching the surface. Let me give you another downside. Eating sugar causes arterial inflammation. When your arteries inflame, your body packs it with oxidized LDL which can lead to heart problems and strokes due to constriction in your arteries. Guess what causes arterial inflammation? There's more as well. We need to brush our teeth because of our high carb diets. It causes tooth decay and gum disease. Before high carb diets, our ancestors had hea

Recommends allsunny · 2022-09 · on “Lose weight the slow and incredibly difficult way”

i get the joke but reminds me of a good talk where some googlers got a little upset when gary taubes started going into the problems with CICO thinking. [this video]