Top all-time · #2412
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Gary Taubes
Personal blog · garytaubes.comhealthscience
Gary Taubes's personal blog at garytaubes.com covers health and science. Since 2010, 31 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “Calories, fat or carbohydrates? Why diets work (when they do)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-19, and you can follow it by feed.
42mentions?
31HN people?
2010–2024first – last linked?
Author of Rethinking Diabetes, The Case Against Sugar, Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories
Most-linked posts?
- Calories, fat or carbohydrates? Why diets work (when they do)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-12-14
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-12-27
- Gary Taubes: The Inanity of Overeating 3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-12-06
- Thoughts (and thought experiments) on the calorie issue2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-03-24
- /2011/09/catching-up-on-lost-time-ancestral-health-symposium-food-reward-palatability-insulin-signaling-carbohydrates-kettles-pots-other-odds-ends-part-i/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-28
- /2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-12-27
- /2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritional-epidemiology-and-meat/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-30
- New blog by Gary Taubes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-08
- /2011/11/catching-up-on-lost-time-%E2%80%93-the-ancestral-health-symposium-food-reward-palatability-insulin-signaling-and-carbohydrates%E2%80%A6-part-iic/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-05
- The Dissolution of the Nutrition Science Initiative2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-01
What Hacker News says?
It would probably a very good idea if you can keep to it. Doing so with mild T2 diabetes could lead to complete remission (as long as the diet is kept). In more advanced T2 diabetes it could lead to significant improvement, and reduction of required medication. People with T1 diabetes simply don't produce enough insulin. External insulin is required. Management of T1 diabetes is also way more complicated and mistake…
Comment linking /rethinking-diabetes/
on “Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands”Submitted Calories, fat or carbohydrates? Why diets work (when they do) as a story · 97 points
HN discussionHmm. Maybe Gary Taubes has changed his approach, because in a typically-logorrhetic blog post last year, he went on about why low-fat calorie-restricted diets work exactly because the "absolute amount of carbohydrates consumed goes down." http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/calories-fat-or-carbohydra...
Comment linking /2010/12/calories-fat-or-carbohydrates/
on “Eating Healthily for $3 a Day”Submitted The Dissolution of the Nutrition Science Initiative as a story · 66 points
HN discussionTaubes has responded to the wholehealthsource critique (I have not read it, but it was referred to as a "thorough multi-part smack down"): http://garytaubes.com/2011/09/catching-up-on-lost-time-ances...
on “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”Submitted Gary Taubes: The Inanity of Overeating as a story · 55 points
HN discussionGuyenet is pushing the same idea that most of mainstream nutrition science pushes: playing with the composition of a diet may affect your willingness to stick with a diet. This is pretty well known, and has a fairly simple mechanism. By imposing artificial restrictions on your diet (no carbs, no acidic foods, nothing brown to yellow in color), you reduce the amount of calories you can consume. I.e., where you previo…
Comment linking /2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011”Submitted The Inanity of Overeating (calories and thermodynamics) as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI am flabbergasted to see Gary Taubes being named a charlatan, especially since Taubes has written a whole freakishly long response to Guynete's articles on his blog: http://garytaubes.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011”Submitted Science, Pseudoscience, Nutritional Epidemiology, and Meat as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThere is a long debate over this post. I personally found the best answer to the matter here: http://paleohacks.com/questions/49970/how-do-we-reconcile-st... Taubes also responded to Guyenet: http://garytaubes.com/2011/11/catching-up-on-lost-time-%E2%8...
on “Salt, We Misjudged You”Submitted Vegetable Oils, (Francis) Bacon, Bing Crosby, and the American Heart Association as a story · 5 points
HN discussionMany obesity researchers find Guyenet to be quite the joke. For example, Peter over at HyperLipid recently ripped him to utter shreds: http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/06/confused.html http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/06/insulin-un-de... Not to mention, Taubes countered Guyenet with a 6-part series refuting Guyenet's widely mocked food-reward/palatability hypothesis: http://garytaubes.com/2011/…
on “The Hidden Truths about Calories ”Submitted Calories, fat or carbohydrates? Why diets work (when they do). as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn his article "Science pseudoscience nutritional epidemiology and meat" http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritio... Gary Taubes discusses how epidemiological studies can fail to account for something called the "compliance effect" - the missing variable. It was an eye opener for me.
Comment linking /2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritional-epidemiology-and-meat/
on “Simpson's Paradox”Submitted Thoughts (and thought experiments) on the calorie issue as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> But if a fat person simply eats less, no matter the macronutrient content, he or she will lose weight. This is well documented, and even Taubes doesn't disagree with that. A low-carb diet doesn't have to be intentionally low calorie. That's the point. Eating very low carb allows the body to adjust hunger levels to match existing fat stores. If you're fat and you allow your body to do its job, you won't be as hungr…
Comment linking /2012/11/what-would-happen-if-thoughts-and-thought-experiments-on-the-calorie-issue/
on “Hard Science About Diet”Submitted Gary Taubes on Research and Paradigm Shifts as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTaubes touches on it in this article a bit: http://garytaubes.com/2011/11/catching-up-on-lost-time-%E2%8... It's not a scientific study, but it addresses the obese people not eating significantly too much.
on “Hard Science About Diet”Submitted The Dose of Intervention and the Land of Dr. Oz as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOff the top of my head no, most of my insight came from observing addiction in others, and experimenting over the course of a decade. However, the two books which I guess started me on this journey are Why We Get Fat by Garry Taube [0] and The 4 Hour Body by Tim Ferris [1]. Both of these books take a scientific approach to diet (which is governed by habit and addiction, after all). I will say this, I am convinced th…
Comment linking /works/books/why-we-get-fat
on “Launch HN: Atmana (YC S21) – An app to help cut down on compulsive porn usage”Submitted New blog by Gary Taubes as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in this sort of thing, I can't recommend Gary Taubes' book Good Calories Bad Calories highly enough. If you're not so interested, he wrote a TL;DR version called Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. He also has a blog: http://www.garytaubes.com/blog/
Comment linking /blog/
on “How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick ”Your assumption about the laws of thermodynamics predicates that the "Energy out" part of the equation is not somehow effected by the type of "Energy in" (Adding wet sticks to a fire will not produce as much released energy as adding dry sticks or gasoline soaked sticks) The general argument about carbs or any food with high glycemic response is that these foods are like adding "wet sticks" to the fire. There's cons…
Comment linking /
on ““Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions”You can read the studies here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673150 and here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oby.22468 They are both thorough, easy to read, and contradict Taubes’ primary claims. A third was supposed to occur (I think) but the funding, surprisingly, was withdrawn. Edit: there were three studies done, all of which contradict Taubes’ claims. You can read his wonky…
Comment linking /the-dissolution-of-the-nutrition-science-initiative/
on “50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)”Out of topic, but counting calories don't mean squad for a diet. It is a myth. Read http://garytaubes.com/ for a good research on this. Counting carbs is what is important. Low Carb, High Fat is what science tells you should do to loose wait. Using thermodynamics to understand our biology is useless. EDIT for on topic add: Useless data is useless, naked or not. They should have chosen a better example.
Comment linking /
on “Data looks better naked”Guyenet is a joke. Peter over at HyperLipid recently ripped him to utter shreds: http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/06/confused.html http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/06/insulin-un-de... Not to mention, Taubes countered Guyenet with a 6-part series refuting Guyenet's widely mocked food-reward/palatability hypothesis: http://garytaubes.com/2011/09/catching-up-on-lost-time-ances... http://garytaubes…
on “How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?”This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. I was just talking to my sister about kitsch, camp, and punk, and how all of those scenes were misunderstood by a certain subpopulation who didn't catch the irony . "Animal House" was pure parody. I can tell you that a lot of fellow undergrads emulated it, and not everyone caught th…
Comment linking /2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/
on “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”See this article from the scientific journal _Science_ from 2001 (not endorsing the linked website, it was just the first non-paywalled location of the article): http://garytaubes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Science-The... The fallacies around dietary guidelines have been known to the scientific community for over 15 years at least. I read that article when it was in the original issue and I was dumbfounded by th…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Science-The-soft-science-of-dietary-fat-21.pdf
on “Is the Era of Great Famines Over?”This person has rediscovered the William Banting original low-carb diet from 1863[1] : "The emphasis was on avoiding sugar, saccharine matter, starch, beer, milk and butter." Banting knew carbs made you fat over a century ago, but of course since the scientists couldn't figure out WHY they discredited it. And so it ever was. They also knew carbs should be avoided by diabetics, but when insulin was invented they chos…
Comment linking /2012/02/on-the-greatly-exaggerated-demise-of-the-insulin-hypothesis/
on “No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days”
