Book Review: 4/5 Impact On Me (Book By Nina Teicholz)
Read more about the book here
.
I picked up this book after reading "The Case Against Sugar" and receiving a recommendation from a Slack community friend. The book riveted me throughout. I was eager to learn more about the research methodologies and the evolving understanding of diet. I couldn't put it down.
From my reading, fat was first unfairly blamed for causing weight gain because it contains 9 kcal/g, compared to 4 kcal/g for proteins or carbohydrates. This suggests you get more energy from the same amount of fat, although people might not eat the same weight in grams. Unknown. An essential but omitted topic in the book is calorie counting. For example, a diet rich in red meat and animal fat can be healthy. Does this assume total calorie intake remains the same?
I learned that Ancel Keys was a key advocate for reducing saturated fat in diets. Americans followed this recommendation for decades. Yet, obesity and metabolic disorders still increased. This pointed to other culprits, such as sugar and refined carbohydrates like white bread and white rice. The book traces the history of the bias against saturated fat in the U.S., contrasting with Europe's lesser concern. The author shared how companies, including McDonald's, shifted from saturated to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. They did this to follow the nutrition advice. Malcolm Gladwell also covered this in his podcast, "Revisionist History". But, these veg oils create unhealthy trans fats when heated. Trans fats were later condemned. So, these companies switched to other oils, which were unstable at frying temperatures and produced unhealthy by-products including some sludge in fryers and free radicals in us.
Another revelation was the demonization of palm oil, mainly to protect U.S. soybean interests. The author argues that palm oil, butter, beef, and pork fat are not harmful. The methodological errors in nutrition research over the years astounded me. These often stemmed from the biased belief that fat must be bad. This connects to Peter Attia's "Outlive" book, where he mentioned nutrition research has not been objective. Worry less about what you eat. Go out and get some exercise.
My takeaway is to reduce my consumption of products with vegetable oils. Increase the fat percentage in my diet by reducing carbs, especially sugars. This book gave me more information, making it easier to internalize to follow my diet. I internalized the importance of eating natural foods, less refined foods, and desserts. It built on learnings from "Exercised," "Endurance," "Dopamine Nation," "The Gut," "Outlive," and "Case Against Sugar" books. It had a 4 out of 5 impact on me.