One of the most influential books on food that I’ve read is Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He recently wrote an article in the NY Times that covers many of his points in the book. The essay also touches on how some scientists are finally coming to realize the prescription of the food pyramid may not be the best for health.

While the low-fat-is-good-health dogma represents reality as we have come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low-carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy.

The article is a long read, but well worth it if you want a “Cliffs notes” version of the book. Taubes delves into the science of why carbohydrates wreak havoc on the human body and also why the fat-free road is paved with landmines. What’s most surprising and yet saddening at the same time is that the knowledge of the ill effects of excess carbohydrates had been known and yet somehow forgotten. This isn’t even speaking about Paleo man, but instead in the 19th century.

In ”The Physiology of Taste,” for instance, an 1825 discourse considered among the most famous books ever written about food, the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says that he could easily identify the causes of obesity after 30 years of listening to one ‘’stout party” after another proclaiming the joys of bread, rice and (from a ”particularly stout party”) potatoes.

WOD – 06.14.10

Weighted Pullups 5-3-1-1-1

Four rounds for time:

• 6 Hang Power Cleans
• 8 Knees-to-Elbows
• 10 Kettlebell Swings