The Case Against Sugar, Gary Taubes
The Case Against Sugar, Gary Taubes
49 Rating(s)
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

The Case Against Sugar

Author: Gary Taubes

Narrator: Mike Chamberlain

Unabridged: 11 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/27/2016


Synopsis

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé that makes the convincing case that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium: backed by powerful lobbies, entrenched in our lives, and making us very sick.

Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever; obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And sugar is at the root of these, and other, critical society-wide, health-related problems. With his signature command of both science and straight talk, Gary Taubes delves into Americans' history with sugar: its uses as a preservative, as an additive in cigarettes, the contemporary overuse of high-fructose corn syrup. He explains what research has shown about our addiction to sweets. He clarifies the arguments against sugar, corrects misconceptions about the relationship between sugar and weight loss; and provides the perspective necessary to make informed decisions about sugar as individuals and as a society.

About The Author

GARY TAUBES is the author of Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories. He is a former staff writer for Discover and a correspondent for the journal Science. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Esquire, and has been included in numerous “Best of” anthologies, including The Best of the Best American Science Writing (2010). He has received three Science in Society Journalism Awards from the National Association of Science Writers. He is the recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research and a co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI). He lives in Oakland, California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Michelle on February 07, 2017

Gary Taubes has done an excellent job in explaining why sugar is so terrible for the body. I am seeing a nutritionist to help me with my weight and on my last visit she stated to me that you can eat any food in moderation. My response to her was, "What does moderation mean? I guess a person could sm......more

Goodreads review by Emily Kestrel on January 23, 2017

Guess what? Sugar is not a healthy food. Who knew? In fact, according to Gary Taubes, it causes just about every "disease of Western civilization" and we probably shouldn't eat it at all, which kind of reminded me of all the other nutrition doomsday books I've read over the years: The China Study...d......more

Goodreads review by Clif on April 13, 2022

This book delves into Western civilization's history with sugar and its increasing rate of consumption since introduction of refined sugar into the Western diet. With this increased consumption also came the economic power of the sugar industry that throughout most of the twentieth century was the f......more

Goodreads review by Bam cooks the books on July 31, 2017

Having been on a zero-sugar diet for the past three weeks and planning to make it a lifestyle change (see my review of Zero Sugar Diet: The 14-Day Plan to Flatten Your Belly, Crush Cravings, and Help Keep You Lean for Life), I wanted to read a bit more about the science behind the claim that the add......more

Goodreads review by Lubinka on March 02, 2017

Amazingly eye-opening, and truly terrifying. It's hard to grasp the huge impact of refined sugar on human evolution, and - once again - thanks to greedy lobbies, we happily march towards our doom, so that the sugar industry barons may continue to enjoy the profits of providing us with our drug of ch......more


Quotes

"Taubes’s writing is both inflammatory and copiously researched. It is also well timed... Hard-charging (and I’ll add game-changing)." —Dan Barber, The New York Times

"[A] blitz of a book... Mr. Taubes’s argument is so persuasive that, after reading The Case Against Sugar, this functioning chocoholic cut out the Snacking Bark and stopped eating cakes and white bread... The Case Against Sugar should be a powerful weapon against future misinformation." —Eugenia Bone, The Wall Street Journal

"Compelling... Perhaps at long last, sugar is getting its just desserts." —The Economist

"Taubes builds his case through lawyerly layering of rich detail... Extraordinary and refreshing." —The Atlantic

"Taubes sifts through centuries’ worth of data... Practically everything one wants to know about sugar—its history, its geography, the addiction it causes—is here. In the end, each of us is confronted with a choice. Continue consuming sugar at our current level and suffer the ill effects. Or reduce, if not eliminate, it from our diet, thereby improving our odds of living a long, healthy life." —The Seattle Times

"I can't think of another journalist who has had quite as profound an influence on the conversation about nutrition." —Michael Pollan

“[The Case Against Sugar] should be required reading if only to understand the scope, power, and impact that Big Sugar has had on America’s health—or, perhaps more accurately, sickness.” —Outside

“Staggering… Taubes’s brilliant and accessible science writing has won him many fans.” —Booklist, starred review

"[Taubes] delivers another convincing book... Fascinating and illuminating.” —Library Journal

“[Taubes’s work is] compelling, as well as meticulously explained and researched. Readers will hate to love this book, since it will cause them to thoroughly rethink the place of sugar in their diets.” —Publishers Weekly

“[Taubes] helps us understand how to make better decisions regarding sugar as individuals and as a nation.” —Library Journal

“The obesity epidemic is an ever-growing threat to the overall health of our nation. In making the case against sugar, Gary Taubes details the often insidious efforts by the sugar industry to hide how harmful it is, just as the tobacco companies once did.  This is required reading for not only every parent, but every American.” —Katie Couric

“No one in this country has worked harder on or better understood the role of sugar in our diet than Gary Taubes. As a journalist, an investigator, a scientist, and an advocate, he is without peer. (Plus, he knows how to write.) The Case Against Sugar is not only a terrific history but a forward-thinking document that can help us think more intelligently about how (and how not) to eat.” —Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything Fast

“Once again, the brilliant Gary Taubes manages to make a complex scientific subject easy to understand. The Case Against Sugar is a riveting history of ideas, a clear analysis of evidence, and an utterly persuasive argument that sugar is the new tobacco. Taubes methodically explains why sugar—not sloth, not fat—accounts for our unprecedented levels of obesity, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Taubes answers every counter-argument as he exposes bad research, reveals conflicts of interest, and explodes myths.” —Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

“I am grateful beyond words for Gary Taubes's courageous and meticulous documentation of the health dangers of sugar. No one has hit the political and economic forces behind this 'acceptable' addiction as clearly and unflinchingly. The information in this book will, quite literally, save your life if you apply it." —Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

“If you ever doubted that sugar is the root cause of our obesity, diabetes, and heart disease epidemic, then look no further than The Case Against Sugar. This deeply researched, well-reasoned exploration of the history and biology of sugar would convince any supreme court of nutrition that it is sugar, not fat, that should be indicted and limited.  Doctors, scientists, policymakers, and concerned eaters would do well to heed Gary Taubes’s advice.” —Mark Hyman, M.D., author of The Blood Sugar Solution

The Case Against Sugar is just that. It’s a carefully reasoned, persuasive account of how doubts about sugar in the modern diet were systematically overlooked for over a century. Gary Taubes has become an important voice in the debate surrounding nutrition. He once again presents a compelling argument that will challenge our knowledge about the connection between food and health—it’s a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the impact of the ingredients we eat.” —Nathan Myhrvold, lead author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking