Gary Taubes on Dr Oz or shall I Say in Oz?


via The Dose of Intervention and the Land of Dr. Oz | Gary Taubes | Gary Taubes.

Gary wrote Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories and makes a whole lotta sense! Going on Dr Oz’s show is big for this type of thinking and approach to nutrition so although it may have been more parts entertainment — it will stir a few people out there to seek out more information on eating the healthy way..

Today marks my appearance on the Dr. Oz Show, which was, let’s just say, an interesting experience and leave it at that. It was the show, though, that (finally) prompted me to address an issue I’ve wanted to address for quite some time.

The Dr. Oz Show is one part health advice and discussion and quite a few parts entertainment, as Oz’s producers kept telling me in the days before we taped the episode. To make for what they consider good television they played me up as the second coming of Atkins – a persona that my wife likes to refer to as “meat boy” — while Oz got to play the role of the harvest king, extolling the healing virtues of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. This made it more difficult than I would have liked to get across the important messages from my books, but television is television and I certainly knew what they had in store for me.

My message and the message of Why We Get Fat was not that we should all be eating nothing but animal products – and certainly not the unappetizing meat and eggs that Oz’s crew prepared as props — but that carbohydrate-rich foods are inherently fattening, some more so than others, and that those of us predisposed to put on fat do so because of the carbs in the diet. That’s why I called the book Why We Get Fat rather than some variation on The Miracle 24-Hour (or 14-Day or Three Week or Three month) Diet Cure, which is more the norm for lay books in the nutrition genre.