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The Big Fat Surprise
Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet
Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! In this well-researched and captivating narrative, veteran food writer Nina Teicholz proves how everything we've been told about fat is wrong.
For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of "bad" saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat "heart healthy" fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation's health has declined. What is going on?
In The Big Fat Surprise, Teicholz reveals how sixty years of nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers have made basic scientific mistakes that, through a mix of ego and bias, allow dangerous misrepresentations to become dogma, and how scientists who dared oppose this consensus have been ostracized. For eight years, Teicholz has pored over the massive research literature and interviewed hundreds of leading experts to unravel the shockingly distorted claims of nutrition studies. She brings these researchers to life and shows how their ambitions, loyalties, and rivalries have undermined a field of research already full of difficult pitfalls.
With a lively narrative style akin to Michael Pollan's in The Omnivore's Dilemma and the scientific rigor of Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, Teicholz convincingly upends the conventional wisdom about all fats. Her groundbreaking claim is that more dietary fat leads to better health, wellness, and fitness. Science shows that reducing the saturated fat in our diets has been disastrous for our health as a nation, and we can, guilt-free, welcome these "whole fats" back into our lives.
Nina Teicholz has written for Gourmet magazine, the New Yorker, the Economist, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. She also covered Latin America for National Public Radio. She lives in New York with her husband and two sons.
Erin Bennett is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and a stage actress who played Carlie Roberts in the BBC radio drama Torchwood: Submission. She can be heard on several video games. Regional theater appearances include the Intiman, Pasadena Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, A Noise Within, Laguna Playhouse, and the Getty Villa. She trained at Boston University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
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Reviews
“At last the whole truth about the luscious foods our bodies really need!”
“A page-turner story of science gone wrong: what Gary Taubes did in Good Calories, Bad Calories for debunking the connection between fat consumption and obesity, Nina Teicholz now does in The Big Fat Surprise for the purported connection between fat and heart disease. Misstep by misstep, blunder by blunder, Ms. Teicholz recounts the statistical cherry-picking, political finagling, and pseudoscientific bullying that brought us to yet another of the biggest mistakes in health and nutrition: the low-fat and low-saturated fat myth for heart health.”
“Nina Teicholz reveals the disturbing underpinnings of the profoundly misguided dietary recommendations that have permeated modern society, culminating in our overall health decline. But The Big Fat Surprise is refreshingly empowering. This wonderfully researched text provides the reader with total validation for welcoming healthful fats back to the table, paving the way for weight loss, health, and longevity.”
“This meticulously researched book thoroughly dismantles the current dietary dogma that fat—particularly saturated fat—is bad for us. Teicholz brings to life the key personalities in the field and uncovers how nutritional science has gotten it so wrong. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe this journalistic tour de force. I read it twice: once for the information and again just for the writing.”
“For many years Americans have been told that low-fat diets are the best way to prevent heart disease and lose weight. While heart disease deaths have indeed dropped, the rate of heart disease has not and the obesity rate is increasing…This fascinating book raises important issues as Americans battle obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease…Thought provoking and well worth purchasing.”
“Journalist Teicholz combs the science, or lack thereof, to learn how the fats in the American diet grew horns and cloven hooves…Solid, well-reported science in the Gary Taubes mold.”
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