THE
LOW-CARB
FRAUD
T. Colin Campbell, PhD
with HOWARD JACOBSON, PhD
BenBella Books, Inc.
Dallas, Texas
Copyright © 2014 by T. Colin Campbell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
BenBella Books, Inc.
10300 N. Central Expressway
Suite #530
Dallas, TX 75231
Send feedback to [email protected]
First e-book edition: February 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, T. Colin, 1934–
The low-carb fraud / T. Colin Campbell, PhD, with Howard Jacobson, PhD.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-940363-09-7 (trade cloth) — ISBN 978-1-940363-03-5 (electronic)
1. Low-carbohydrate diet. 2. Nutrition. 3. Prehistoric peoples—Food. I. Jacobson, Howard, 1930– II. Title.
RM237.73.C36 2014
613.2’833—dc23
2013037793
Copyediting by Oriana Leckert
Proofreading by Chris Gage and Amy Zarkos
Indexing by Clive Pyne Book Indexing Services, Inc.
Cover image by Getty Images
Cover design by Bradford Foltz
Jacket design by Sarah Dombrowsky
Text design and composition by Publishers’ Design and Production Services, Inc.
Printed by Bang Printing
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
To place orders through Perseus Distribution:
Tel: 800-343-4499
Fax: 800-351-5073
E-mail: [email protected]
Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at [email protected] or 214-750-3628.
To the promoters of the “low-carb” diet whoprompted me to write this book
CONTENTS
Appendix: The Paleo Diet
Preview of Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Endnotes
Index
It’s no secret that Americans struggle with weight loss. Since 1980, when the rise in obesity first caught the attention of the media, the national rate of obesity has doubled.1 Now, more than one-third of all U.S. adults are obese. And despite hundreds of new (or cleverly recycled) “solutions” hitting the shelves in book or prepackaged food form each year, we just can’t seem to stem the tide. Our national weight problem is just the tip of the iceberg, however; being overweight is linked to some of the major causes of premature death, including heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.2
This book is primarily about low-carb diets—one of the more financially successful, and one of the most health-threatening, solutions proposed to meet our desire to shed pounds and become healthier. We’ll discuss why the low-carb diet is so appealing, how we’ve been tricked in thinking it’s healthy, and the truth about its health impacts. But this book is also concerned with the beliefs about nutrition that underlie those things: where the belief that carbs are bad came from, and why it has persisted despite so much evidence to the contrary.
There have almost always been fad diets with varying degrees of scientific merit, some more effective than others. Several decades ago, and still to a certain extent today, the most trusted advice was, essentially: eat less and exercise more. Weight loss was a matter of arithmetic—calories in vs. calories out. But we were also told that dietary fat is the problem. Fat is what makes us, well, fat. So if we want to lose weight, all we have to do is consume less of it.
But as the national obesity rate rose, it was clear that this advice on fat just wasn’t cutting it. The Standard American Diet (SAD) also wasn’t cutting it. We needed to rethink the way we looked at proper nutrition. It was during the 1980s, in the wake of these rising concerns, that the low-carb movement began to take hold. It hit its stride in 1988, with the publication of Dr. Robert Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, which was “new” only in that it followed Atkins’ 1972 book, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, which had not been especially successful in the marketplace. And this “new” book’s contents represented an appealing alternate belief system about weight, nutrition, and health.
In a nutshell, the low-carb movement told adherents to severely limit their intake of carbohydrates and instead to get the lion’s share of their calories from protein and fat. The problem with the SAD isn’t fat, the book claims, but carbs—those found in bread, rice, and pasta, in fruit and starchy vegetables. The best way to lose weight, Atkins proclaims, is to cut back on carbs.
And it worked! By feasting on bacon and steak and butter, low-carb dieters actually did drop pounds.
