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The Big Fat Surprise

Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

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The Big Fat Surprise

By: Nina Teicholz
Narrated by: Erin Bennett
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About this listen

A New York Times bestseller
Named one of
The Economist’s Books of the Year 2014
Named one of
The Wall Street Journal’s Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2014
Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014
Forbes’s Most Memorable Healthcare Book of 2014

In
The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health. Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk!

For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of “bad” saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat “heart healthy” fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation’s health has declined. What is going on?

In The Big Fat Surprise, Teicholz reveals how sixty years of nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers have made basic scientific mistakes that, through a mix of ego and bias, allow dangerous misrepresentations to become dogma, and how scientists who dared oppose this consensus have been ostracized. For eight years, Teicholz has pored over the massive research literature and interviewed hundreds of leading experts to unravel the shockingly distorted claims of nutrition studies. She brings these researchers to life and shows how their ambitions, loyalties, and rivalries have undermined a field of research already full of difficult pitfalls.

With a lively narrative style akin to Michael Pollan’s in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the scientific rigor of Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, Teicholz convincingly upends the conventional wisdom about all fats. Her groundbreaking claim is that more dietary fat leads to better health, wellness, and fitness. Science shows that reducing the saturated fat in our diets has been disastrous for our health as a nation, and we can, guilt-free, welcome these “whole fats” back into our lives.

©2014 Nina Teicholz (P)2014 Blackstone Audiobooks
Biological Sciences Diets, Nutrition & Healthy Eating Social Sciences Heartfelt Low Carb Food Science Cooking Oil
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Absolute must listen.

Easily the most fascinating book I've listened to this year.

A vast vast amount of information is drawn together in a chronological narrative that really breaks down how such a huge scandle or, if it must be framed differently, experiment of the prescribed Western diet came about.

An absolute eye opener. Although it may make you fear for loved ones who are suffering with many of the conditions you hear of but are dead set in their ways by a lifetime of conditioning.

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FAT.....

really enjoyed this book, well written and has lots of information and studies. definitely worth a purchase.

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Finally a great book on debunking the False Scienc

Thank you very much for this! it is so sad what is going on in the so called nutritional science... it's all about the money for many of them. I almost ruined my life for 20 years following low fat principles.... I am healing now....with fat...meat...

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Saturated fat is healthy

Essential information for a healthy diet. Mainstream nutritional data is incorrect. Eat butter and be healthy!

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A detailed summary of the many lies we’ve been told about fats

I found this author after following Jason Fung’s work for a while. It went into more depth than I was expecting, and I found it hard to follow in places. I’m not sure why exactly but I wasn’t fully locked in with the narrator. There’s a lot to take away from this book however so stick with it. Lies, ego and greed all have a place in this story. And I am happy now that I have even more evidence of the dangers of fake foods and restrictive diets on long term health.

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Enlightening discussion, well researched.

This is quite an in depth discussion of how dietary guidelines were formed and what the under powered research said about them 50 years ago versus now.
If you're looking for recipes etc then find something else but if you want to know what body of evidence is mounting that maybe we have it wrong, start here!
Sticks to the science, little in the way of anecdotes on individuals following such a diet as in many books on this topic.

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Eye opening

Not new information to me but all compacted in a well researched and well written book.

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If you think nutrition is science, this book is a

Revelation. Modern nutrition is so entangled with Big Food interests and politics that it stopped being science and became politics, quite oppressive to descent.
The book is very good, interesting and doesn't have heavy scientific load of chemical and biological terminology. And it is very well read.

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modern diets debunked?

the in depth historical and modern resurch included in this book are fantastic and certainly will make any reader question our modern dietary standing. thoroughly enjoyed

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Lots of stats’s

This book is a great education, to what us humans put in our bodies.
Food companies have a lot to answer for, the fact that we go to a supermarket and are sold food that we believe is so called good for us.
It truly has opened my eyes.

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