Your Food Choices - Why do You make Them? (and recommended books)

The obvious answer to the above question is , “I eat what is available” or “I eat what I enjoy”, but subliminally, our food choices are often made as a result of health articles that we have read in newspapers and other media. 



From time to time, we see articles or documentaries warning us about eating too many eggs, or too much fat, “eat fatty fish”, “eat the right fats“, “eat more nuts, but not too many” or “eat more fruit and vegetables” or “this makes us live longer” and so on.  



The most influential piece of dietary advice in the last 70 years was the recommendation on reducing fats in the diet. This started in the 1960s in USA and particularly with scientist Ancel Keys, who was later featured on Time‘s front cover. Since then, we have seen an increase in the numbers of overweight and obese people who have followed that advice.



Gary Taubes’ book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” explores the science behind the low-fat dogma, examines many of the studies made and shows that much of the nutritional science that we take for granted today is based on very unsound scientific studies. It’s quite a weighty book, with its emphasis on science and statistics (it took him five years to write, I believe) and its 600pp contain over 100pp of references alone, but it’s well worth the effort. 

If you're not of a scientific bent, requiring detailed proofs, you may find this book by the same science journalist more approachable. It carries a similar message, but in less detail; "Why We get Fat and What to Do about It". An audio version of this book is available on Youtube.

For those of you who prefer seminars and interviews on Youtube, follow this link;


www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEuIlQONcHw



To find out more about this journalist, see;  www.garytaubes.com/