
Challenging everything we thought we knew about weight gain, Gary Taubes' controversial bestseller argues it's not calories but carbs driving obesity. Endorsed by health experts and praised for dismantling the "calories-in, calories-out" myth, this book reveals why exercise alone won't save you.
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Why does obesity associate so strongly with poverty if it's caused by overeating in prosperous societies? This contradiction should immediately make us suspicious of conventional wisdom. The Pima Indians of Arizona offer a striking historical example. When anthropologists studied them in the early 1900s, they were already notably obese-despite having just transitioned from prosperity to poverty. What changed wasn't prosperity or food quantity, but quality. Trading posts had introduced sugar and white flour, while government rations consisted largely of refined carbohydrates. This pattern repeats throughout history: when traditional populations adopt Western foods-particularly refined flour and sugar-obesity and diabetes follow, regardless of overall calorie intake or physical activity. The poverty-obesity connection isn't about abundance; it's about the specific foods that dominate modern Western diets, especially in lower-income communities where refined carbohydrates form the foundation of daily nutrition. What if obesity isn't about how much we eat, but what we eat?