The Case Against Sugar

I have read Gary's good calories, bad calories, why we get fat, and now the case against sugar and this is my favorite so far, although I love all the ones I have read but this is a book that everyone should read, especially any nutritionists worth their salt.

This effects of sugar consumption on various populations and cultures is eye opening. These effects alone should prompt a reasonable person to pause and seriously consider continuing to consumer sugar as a regular part of their diet and whether it provides any nutritional value at all.

The Case Against Sugar should be required reading for all parents. Introducing our children to sugar puts them on a treacherous path. This book should prompt immediate changes in our dietary habits. Sugar is deliciously addictive and cruelty lethal.

Mr. Taubes has been a very interesting voice in sugar disadvocacy. Anti-advocacy. Unsugaring. Whatever. I've heard him a few times and I like his persistence while still acknowledging many of the pitfalls in nutrition science such as causation/correlation, difficulties in performing controlled trials, etc. I suspect that he has covered this better in other places, because I found this book interesting at times (the political histories of sugar and its bed partners like tobacco. Just wow), but the evidence as presented was repetitive and fairly brief. It isn't that his hypothesis doesn't make sense. But this book feels like it could have been a long form article instead.
Like so many things in nutrition, I suspect much of what Mr. Taubes says is true for some or even many people. I would seek out one of his other books perhaps with more guidance on how to approach desugaring.

The author patiently and persistently explains in laymen's terms an astonishing history of nutritional and medical studies, while at the same time properly exposing serious shortcomings as compared to rigorous scientific research. The end result is a cogent and most compelling case against sugar.

This book got into the science, just enough to explain it, not so much it overwhelmed. I had to look up a couple phrases to make sure I understood, which I love because there's no point reading a book if I'm smarter than the author. I'd definitely recommend this book.

I have all three of Gary Taubes' books on nutrition and they are all first rate. Unlike a lot of faux experts, M.D.s who wouldn't know a random control trial or any about nutritional physiology if it sat on their head, Gary Taubes actually reads research and knows good research from bad research. I think his are the best books on the field of nutrition. And they are written very well too, which is a bonus.

When I first read Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, it blew my mind. Changing our diets to reflect the research he discusses in that book improved our health enormously.

Here, he delves more specifically into the dangers of sugar. This felt less practical - much of the book is a history of sugar, especially of the ways the sugar industry, food manufacturers, nutrition researchers, and the government, have worked together to bring sugar to a central position in our diets, despite the clear research that shows its dangers.

I have read much of this information before - in Taubes' work, in Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, in It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways, so I didn't feel it was revelatory.

BUT! If you have never read those books, never thought about why the standard American breakfast foods - cereal, breads, fruit juice, dairy - are just sugar, sugar, sugar and more sugar, have I got a book for you.

Taubes makes science understandable and history engaging, and he manages to detail a distressing conspiracy without sounding like a...well, like a conspiracy theorist.

Extremely well researched and written. Taubes presents a highly compelling argument against what has become perhaps the most ubiquitous ingredient in modern times. It is unimaginable to think of how many dollars have been spent in the US alone combating the diseases sugar likely has a significant role in causing. Our health care costs without sugar everywhere would probably plummet. I am now eating as little sugar as possible, and I hope I can get my wife and kids to join me.

When I first read Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, it blew my mind. Changing our diets to reflect the research he discusses in that book improved our health enormously.

Here, he delves more specifically into the dangers of sugar. This felt less practical - much of the book is a history of sugar, especially of the ways the sugar industry, food manufacturers, nutrition researchers, and the government, have worked together to bring sugar to a central position in our diets, despite the clear research that shows its dangers.

I have read much of this information before - in Taubes' work, in Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, in It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways, so I didn't feel it was revelatory.

BUT! If you have never read those books, never thought about why the standard American breakfast foods - cereal, breads, fruit juice, dairy - are just sugar, sugar, sugar and more sugar, have I got a book for you.

Taubes makes science understandable and history engaging, and he manages to detail a distressing conspiracy without sounding like a...well, like a conspiracy theorist.

Extremely well researched and written. Taubes presents a highly compelling argument against what has become perhaps the most ubiquitous ingredient in modern times. It is unimaginable to think of how many dollars have been spent in the US alone combating the diseases sugar likely has a significant role in causing. Our health care costs without sugar everywhere would probably plummet. I am now eating as little sugar as possible, and I hope I can get my wife and kids to join me.

Let me start by saying that I have thoroughly enjoyed other work by Gary Taubes and I am fully onboard with the concept that sugar causes suboptimal health. This book disappointed me in that most of it is just about how sugar came to be such a huge part of the western diet and extended globally from there. Following that, there is a small section about the mechanisms through which sugar might cause a number of illnesses. Then the whole last 3rd of the book is pages of references.

I was hoping for more science, more examples of the impact of sugar on health. And what about refined carbs? Yes, this book is aimed squarely at sucrose, etc, but as many health experts have stated, refined carbs basically just turn into sugar once they enter your system. Given the huge portion of the western diet that they make up, it seems like a miss to completely (and intentially, as stated in the book) ignore them here.

If you're looking for a book about health, read Good Calories, Bad Calories. (I'm thinking about reading it again even as I write this review.). If you're looking for a history lesson, then this will be a great book for you.

Although is does overlap a lot with the first two books, it is still a hell of a read and really well laid out. I wish my physician and the nutritionist she urged me to see would read this (as well as the other books). I wish everyone would read this (as well as the other books). Since reading it (and the other books) I have cut almost all carbs out of my diet - I was already refined sugar free -- but not carb - and all sorts of great things have happened for my physically, mentally and emotionally. I am saving a ton of money on food too!

THE BEST BOOK about the relationship of people consuming sugar in record amounts & then developing metabolic syndrome (Diabetes, obesity & heart disease) It will change the way you view food and how you shop at the grocery store. It will definitely change the way you eat - in a positive way.

Very good, but I was already convinced before I read this latest anti-sugar book about the problems with sugar. I hope it can convince others who are more skeptical because I do think it is a very important message.

This book clearly laid out the facts from a logical and historical perspective. The circumstantial and clinical evidence is, to me, irrefutable that today's sugar is both profitable and deadly. I am seriously trying to get off the drug. Very difficult.