Big Fat Surprise Butter Healthy Reviews Summary

Dietary Guidelines and Health

Pros:

• "This book covers all the history and research of the experts we trusted to give us the best advice for healthy living."
• "Using her background as a reporter she dug deeper into the history of how the country got to the point where most people assume 'fat = unhealthy' by default."
• "This book will challenge everything you know about dieting; the beliefs you hold about what constitutes a healthy diet."
• "EXCELLENT book--well-researched, well-written, full of eye-opening facts."
• "This book is an amazing, eye opening read on how the current guide lines on how we should eat first got started."
• "Fantastic book. I highly recommend reading it to become better informed about what really constitutes a healthy diet."
• "A clear understanding of why we eat what we do, why our health is deteriorating so rapidly, and how fix it."

Cons:

• "The guidelines still being supported still today by the government, American heart association, and the American Diabetes Association is based on very crappy and weak science."
• "The health of the American people is a direct result of the food and beverage industry profit at all costs."
• "However, when you run PETScans on people, the arteries get progressively clogged on a high meat/high fat diet, and actually get cleaner on a truly low-fat, whole food, plant-based diet."
• "Since its inception, the food pyramid (promulgated by the US government) has led to devastating consequences in our health."
• "The bulk of the book (chapters 1-6) recounts how low-fat became a national obsession- basically, a well-intentioned but completely wrong scientist named Ancel Keys guessed in the 1950s that saturated fat might be linked to increasing heart disease."
• "The irresponsible writer is clearly not [qualified]."
• "It's quite disheartening to see weak research elevated over more sound studies just because of popularity in the 'right' circles."

Nutritional Science and Research

Pros:

• "Nutritional science is well established to show whole food, and plant-based nutrition reverses many of the diseases caused by eating the way the author advocates."
• "The most through research I’ve found on food."
• "This is essential information."
• "Teicholz did what thousands of scientists, politicians, writers and opinion makers after Keys did not do – she looked over the Seven Countries study data carefully and saw that it did not fit Keys’ thesis: that a low-fat diet was healthier."
• "This book represents exhaustive research into dietary science and presents multiple sides of a complex topic."
• "An amazingly researched and referenced book which tells the history of how we got to where we are with regards to the obesity and diabetes epidemic."
• "Well written, researched, and documented rebuttal to current low fat diet recommendation."

Cons:

• "Carnivore and carnivore adjacent is how people lived for millennia."
• "Please consider a healthy, whole-foods plant-based diet before believing the dairy industry sponsored pseudoscience and false statements in this book and others like it."
• "You don’t know the story of Ancel Keys until you read this book!"
• "A 2014 meta-analysis published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (which included data from 76 studies and more than a half-million people) found that those who consume higher amounts of saturated fat have no more heart disease than those who consume less."
• "As a vegan for years, I recommend reading “Big Fat Surprise.” The BS untruths we’ve been fed about meat eating and cholesterol followed an arc of deceit."
• "The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades."
• "In reality, autopsies of 20th century Inuit and mummified Inuit from long ago revealed that they had a high degree of cardiovascular disease at surprising young ages, and also suffered from very high rates of osteoporosis, plus short lifespan."

Impact of Diet on Health

Pros:

• "No longer am I afraid to eat fat. It all comes down to eating more healthy foods, and less junk food."
• "Only carbohydrates have been shown, in clinical experiments, to be the likely principal cause of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes."
• "Great info! I’m off all 8 of my prescriptions by following the advice in this book!"
• "The information in this book provides a sane and reasonable explanation for the deterioration of our health as a nation."
• "This is one of the best health food books ever to understand why animal fats are far better to digest than seed / vegetable oils."
• "I felt reborn after eating high quality animal protein and my stomach de-bloated after years of eating beans and rice."
• "I've also totally changed my diet to low carb high fat, lost 13 kgs (26lbs), stopped my terrible knee pain, migraines, pre-diabetes blood sugars, headaches, eczema and mild depression."

Cons:

• "The wrong direction seems to be a combination of people trying to do the right thing, but getting it wrong, and just plain old greed, when they knowingly provided harmful foods and advertised them as being healthy."
• "Chapter 7 debunks the 'Mediterranean diet'- although it's healthier than a low-fat diet, it's still not as good as a higher-fat/low carbohydrate diet."
• "The only science that's settled here is that high-fat Western diets lead to shorter lifespans."
• "An eye opener. Heart healthy, low fat diets have been pushed on us by the food industry for many years."
• "A glaring red flag is that only one side is presented."
• "I've read a LOT of nutrition research and this book has (at least) three fatal flaws--providing weak evidence, ignoring overwhelming evidence that contradicts her thesis, and attacking phony 'low-fat' diets to try to make her case."
• "It's bad enough that most published research findings turn out to be false due to poor design or bias."