Also like Atlas Shrugged it is an awful, awful book. I decided to read Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories because it was apparent to me that, much like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it was hugely influential to a pocket of its readers. I had heard the name of Gary Taubes some time ago, but I did not directly engage any of his writing until recently when he wrote a blog post that I found to be extraordinarily ideological. With that out of the way let me introduce Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Although they can be quite dry and contain more scientific jargon, textbooks and journal articles are the way to go if you are looking for cold hard facts. Textbooks and scholarly journal articles on the other hand are different animals because they experience more rigorous evaluations prior to publishing. The first amendment of the US constitution allows for virtually anything to be published. Their claims will not be vetted well, if at all. I still think popular nutrition books are fine if you want a good yarn with some nutrition science thrown in or maybe you’re waiting in an airport somewhere for your plane to arrive, but I wouldn’t take any of them too seriously. However, now looking back with many advanced science and nutrition classes under my belt I view these texts as overly simplistic and usually presented with a heavy bias.

I devoured these books as quickly and pleasurably as I would a delicious meal. Several years ago I stoked my interest in nutrition with a pantheon of pop science books. They can also be a great way for excellent science communicators to take what might seemingly be a dry and boring field and make it exciting. They can be a great way for accomplished scientists to take a complex field of study and distill it down to its essentials. I have a special place in my heart for pop science books.

Good calories bad calories book