By now, the low-carb diet’s refrain is a familiar one: “Bread is bad for you. Fat doesn’t matter. Carbs are the real reason you can’t lose weight.”
The low-carb universe Dr. Atkins brought into being continues to expand. Low-carb diets, from South Beach to The Zone and beyond, are still the go-to method for weight loss for millions. These diets’ marketing may differ, but they all share two crucial components: the condemnation of “carbs” and an emphasis on meat and fat for calories. Even the latest diet trend, the Paleo diet, is—despite its increased focus on some whole foods—just another variation on the same carbohydrate fears.
In The Low-Carb Fraud, longtime leader in the nutritional science field T. Colin Campbell outlines where and how the low-carb proponents get it wrong: where the belief came from that carbohydrates are bad and why it persists despite all the evidence to the contrary. The foods we misleadingly refer to as “carbs” aren’t all created equal, and treating them that way has major consequences for our nutritional well-being.
If you’re considering a low-carb diet, read this book first. It will change the way you think about what you eat—and how you should be eating to lose weight and optimize your health, now and for the long term.
T. Colin Campbell, PhD, has been at the forefront of nutrition research for more than fifty years. His legacy, the China Study, was, at that time, the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University. He has received more than seventy grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 350 research papers. The China Study was the culmination of a twenty-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine. In 1997, it was cited by the Chinese Ministry of Health as the most important study in medicine in China from 1978–1997. He also has been a member of several expert panels on food, nutrition, and health, especially those of the US National Academy of Sciences and the US National Institutes of Health. He has been the recipient of three lifetime achievement awards.View all by T. Colin Campbell PhD