Gary Taubes and “The Case for Keto” Debunked

In The Case for Keto; Good Calories, Bad Calories; Why We Get Fat; and in his many articles and interviews, the journalist and author Gary Taubes presents a wide range of controversial and questionable assertions about health and diet. While many of these claims have been debunked, they continue to create confusion, and critiques of Taubes’s statements are spread across many sources that can be challenging to locate. To help clarify these issues, I’ve compiled a collection of some of the most insightful videos and articles that thoroughly debunk his misleading or false claims, enabling readers to form their own informed opinions.

Anyone who was taken in by Gary Taubes’s arguments or who is considering acting on his dubious dietary advice would do well to first watch and read everything posted here. A huge thank you to all who took the time to create this content.

The Case for Keto: A Critical Review

Well, here we are again with another new Gary Taubes book. Much like his last two books, this one is simply a variation on Good Calories, Bad Calories, his 2007 book. He uses the exact same quotes, the exact same phrasing, and cites the exact same studies. I can imagine Taubes just taking GCBC and copy-pasting large sections of it into a Word document, changing a few words here and there, adding a couple new paragraphs, and then emailing it to his publisher with the subject line “New Book.” …

Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 1: Mainstream Nutrition Science on Obesity

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether we can find any clear exceptions to the general “trust the experts (when they agree)” heuristic. One example that keeps coming up — at least on LessWrong and related blogs — is Gary Taubes’ claims about mainstream nutrition experts allegedly getting obesity horribly wrong. …

Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 2: Atkins Redux

Taubes first made a name for himself as a low-carb advocate in 2002 with a New York Times article titled “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” …

Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 3: Did the US Government Give Us Absurd Advice About Sugar?

Here’s where I start talking about the thing that initially drove me to write this post series: Taubes’ repeated misrepresentation of the views of the mainstream nutrition authorities he attacks. …

Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 4: What Causes Obesity?

In this post, I’m going to deal with an issue that’s central to Gary Taubes’ critique of mainstream nutrition science: what causes obesity? …

Gary Taubes Can’t Accept He’s Wrong About the Science of Obesity

In 2012, Gary Taubes, a journalist who has penned numerous popular books extolling the benefits of low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets to treat obesity, launched the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), a laudable effort to fund rigorous scientific studies to research his key contention: that it’s not the number of calories that counts when it comes to weight gain, but rather the type of calories. …

For a deeper look at many of Gary Taubes’s questionable claims and scientific misrepresentations, I highly recommend listening to this entire series: