The Bad Food Bible

How and Why to Eat Sinfully

De: Aaron Carroll MD, Nina Teicholz - foreword

Narrado por: Jeff Cummings, Kate Rudd

Physician and popular New York Times Upshot contributor Aaron Carroll mines the latest evidence to show that many "bad" ingredients actually aren't unhealthy, and in some cases are essential to our well-being.

Advice about food can be confusing. There's usually only one thing experts can agree on: some ingredients - often the most enjoyable ones - are bad for you, full stop. But as Aaron Carroll explains, these oversimplifications are both wrong and dangerous: if we stop consuming some of our most demonized ingredients altogether, it may actually hurt us. In The Bad Food Bible, Carroll examines the scientific evidence, showing among other things that you can:

• Eat red meat several times a week: The health effects are negligible for most people, and actually positive if you're 65 or older.
• Have a drink or two a day: As long as it's in moderation, it will protect you against cardiovascular disease without much risk.
• Enjoy a gluten-loaded bagel from time to time: It has less fat and sugar, fewer calories, and more fiber than a gluten-free one.
• Eat more salt: If your blood pressure is normal, you should be more worried about getting too little sodium than having too much.

Full of counterintuitive lessons about food we hate to love, The Bad Food Bible is for anyone who wants to forge eating habits that are sensible, sustainable, and occasionally indulgent.

©2017 Aaron Carroll (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Foreword © 2017 by Nina Teicholz

Good Info

Info here is good, but I actually knew most of this. If you regularly read nutrition books, you might have come across this info. If not, it's a great place to begin.

classic Dr Carroll more in book form !!!

lengthy introduction, but good listen. somewhat repetitive, but important information irregardless. Dr Carroll goes over research at length. TLDR nutrition research is hard and expensive because results don't come immediately. Processed food is worse, and sometimes inevitable, but avoid them as possible. Worry only in accordance to amount. Leave morals aside and be pragmatic about it.

thank you!

this book brought as much evidence and sense that possibly could be applied to nutrition. I appreciate the nuance and practical application suggested. thanks so much Aaron.

A gastrophile,s nightmare....

the truth shall set you free ... let this book go viralon the food network.

Excellent and informative

This book presents information in an unbiased manner on a variety of food topics. This book dispels many food myths. The author is engaging and far from boring. I literally believe everyone should read this book perhaps more than once

Excellent and fair minded

I never read diet books, but made an exception for this one because I’m a fan of his videos. Also, I have a PhD in animal nutrition and have a deep frustration with the way human nutrition is conducted, interpreted and discussed.

To sum it up in a single word, this book was “refreshing”! An honest accounting of the data, or its lack, on numerous topics of particular attention in the popular press on nutrition. Areas where they have consistently gotten things wrong. Coupled with “common sense” strategies for eating. (Common sense is in quotes because this is common sense if you understand how digestion works, but is by no means the conventional wisdom if your nutritional knowledge is based largely on diet books or popular press headlines).

An excellent read, and I found myself nodding along almost the entire time. If anyone were to ask me what one book they should read about nutrition, it used to be the excellent “Big Fat Surprise”, but now I’d recommend this one first.

I love the smell of evidence in the morning

I was drawn to this book after watching Dr. Aaron Carroll's Youtube episode of "Healthcare Triage" on the myth that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." Rare it is when you find a medical practitioner who doesn't just parrot the standard "wisdom" of all our food rules. He is by no stretch "body positive," and so some of the weight rhetoric in the book might be triggering to anyone sensitive to that. Having said that, his expose of the complete disregard for rigorous science in marketing, media, governmental guidelines, education, and, yes, research, surrounding nutrition is both refreshing and enlightening. Further, he advocates mainly to eat fresh, whole food most of the time, enjoy it well-seasoned, and not worry too much about the rest: a message that I don't have any problem with.

I wish he added one more chapter, to go right after debunking salt-is-bad-and-we-all-eat-too-much: WATER. I'm seriously out of patience for the ignorance on this subject. (Just the other day on a webinar given by Vitality, a person who had lost a bunch of weight advocated that everyone should drink 10 glasses of water a day. I was a little shocked that that statement wasn't addressed at all by the announcer - maybe he was caught off guard. But he's a health educator. No excuses.)

The only thing in the book that gave me pause: he misdefined BMI, apparently forgetting that "I" stands for "index" - a statistical way to measure a population, not an individual - and seemingly misattributed it to health rather than insurance. But this could have simply been due to not wanting to go off on that particular tangent in his citation of a particular study. Or maybe it's a footnote in the written text. Or maybe the editor cut it. Whatever. Truly I believe he understands that it's pretty much garbage, because the integrity of Dr. Carroll's message is there in everything else.

Excellent

Great advice! I love all of Aaron's work and also follow him on YouTube. It's good to be relaxed and mindful.

thank you for promoting sensible thinking!

Great book! We need the same thing for so many issues. I love when people talk about the details and not the conclusion.

Excellent, even-handed, and enlightening perspectives on nutrition — IF you trust science

I really enjoyed this: I like Carroll’s straight-shooting tone, his commitment to intellectual honesty, and his obvious dedication to and passion for the principles of “good science”.

I cannot help but wonder how he would have approached this differently, however, in our post-COVID landscape where anti-science sentiment is much more rife and vigorous.

As such, while it’s “refreshing” to hear him lecture on what makes good studies good and bad ones bad, I suspect that’s because it’s a bit nostalgic. Ten years ago, science defenders could have faith that the weight of their logic and good faith arguments would deflect the worst of the conspiracy theorists and science deniers — these days it feels a little naive to think he wouldn’t be shouted down and roundly vilified.

Some chapters are stronger than others. Carroll definitely has an “agenda”, but only in the sense that he has clearly decided he wanted the book to be about teaching moderation and permissiveness, and dispelling unfounded fear. Because of that, a few points here and there are leaned into or glossed over a bit more than he probably should have.

That said, lots and lots of great info and perspective. I do recommend it, if you’re not one of those that has learned recently to distrust science simply because it’s science.