For the first time in Russian - a sensational book by The New York Times Magazine columnist Gary Taubes, who made a name for himself on popular science articles about healthy eating and weight loss. The strength of Taubes' journalistic approach is that, while presenting information in an easy and engaging way, he never forgets weighty arguments and comprehensive evidence. And sometimes it presents facts well known to the reader from a completely new perspective. His volume Why We Get Fat. Myths and facts about what prevents us from being slim” reveals many paradoxes of the nature of excess weight and ways to deal with it. We publish a fragment of the book by Gary Taubes, after reading which you will learn about the fatal connection between insulin and obesity.
Why do we get fat

The well-known American researcher of the nature of obesity, Gary Taubes, comes to a sudden conclusion: not only is training in the gym not a salvation from excess weight, but sometimes it can exacerbate the problem, since increased physical activity only spurs appetite. And even the most charming trainer will not help you become slimmer if you do not change your approach to nutrition.
Tricky Question: What do carbs and cigarettes have in common?
The world-famous book by Gary Taubes was first published in Russia.
The world-famous book by Gary Taubes was first published in Russia.
It does not depend on you whether or not you are born with a predisposition to obesity. However, this predisposition is activated by carbohydrates consumed with food - their quantity and quality. Ultimately, it is carbohydrates that determine the amount of insulin secreted, which controls the accumulation of fat in the body. Not all of us get fat because of carbohydrates, but those who do get fat should blame it on carbohydrates. The less we eat them, the thinner we remain.
A good comparison is with cigarettes. Not every smoker develops lung cancer. Only one in six men and one in nine women.

However, for those who end up with lung cancer, smoking is by far the most common cause. In a world without cigarettes, lung cancer would be the rare disease it once was. In a world without carbohydrate-rich diets, obesity would also be a rare disease.
Not all carbohydrate-containing foods contribute equally to weight gain. it is a very important point. The food that most strongly affects blood sugar and insulin levels contributes most to weight gain.
Such foods include sources of concentrated carbohydrates, and especially those that are easily and quickly digested: any food made from refined flour (bread, cereal, pasta), liquid carbohydrates (beer, fruit juices, carbonated soft drinks) and starch (potatoes)., rice and corn). This food instantly fills the blood with glucose. Blood sugar spikes; insulin starts to go off the charts. We are getting fatter. It is not surprising that such food was perceived as the most excellent way to get better for almost two centuries.

The change in blood sugar levels depending on the type of food consumed is determined by the so-called "glycemic index", which is a correct measure of how insulin will behave in response to a particular product. The higher the glycemic index of a food, the more it will affect blood sugar levels. Entire books have been devoted to the idea of ​​reducing the glycemic index in the diet in order to reduce the amount of insulin produced by the body and stored fat.

Such food, among other things, is, almost without exception, the cheapest way to get the required number of calories. itт факт является очевидным объяснением того, почему бедность человека увеличивает его шансы стать толстым; why there were and still are, as I described at the very beginning of the book, impoverished peoples with levels of obesity and diabetes that rival those of today's US and Europe. This is the explanation that was offered by the doctors who worked with these peoples in the sixties and seventies of the last century, and now we know that it is fully supported by science.

“Most Third World countries have high levels of carbohydrate intake,” wrote Rolf Richards, a British-Jamaican diabetes specialist, in 1974. “It is possible that greater availability of starch than animal protein leads to increased lipogenesis (fat formation) and the development of obesity.” Representatives of these peoples become fat not because they eat too much or move too little, but because of the food that forms the basis of their diet - starches, refined grains and sugar, which literally make them fat.
Carbohydrates found in leafy greens such as spinach and kale, on the other hand, are bound by indigestible fiber and take much longer to break down and enter the bloodstream. These vegetables contain more water and have a lower relative carbohydrate content than starchy vegetables such as potatoes.
You need to eat a much larger serving to get the same doses of carbs, and those carbs take significantly longer to digest. As a result, blood sugar levels remain relatively low during the digestion of these vegetables; they cause a much more restrained release of insulin and thus contribute less to weight gain. However, it also happens to some people that they become so sensitive to carbohydrates in their diet that even these greens can be problematic for them.
Fruit - wolves in sheep's clothing
Carbohydrates in fruits, although they are relatively quick and easy to digest, are also well diluted with water, and thus, their concentration is much lower than in starch. If you take an apple and a potato of the same weight, then this potato will have a significantly greater effect on blood sugar levels, which means that it is likely to contribute more to gaining extra pounds. However, this does not mean that no one gets fat from fruits.
However, fruits are a cause for concern, as they owe their sweet taste to a type of sugar they contain called fructose, and fructose contributes to fat gain no less than carbohydrates. When nutritionists and health authorities were already desperate to contain the growing epidemic of obesity, they began to insist more and more on the need to eat fruits and greens. Fruit does not need to be cooked before consumption; they have neither fat nor cholesterol; they are rich in vitamins (especially vitamin C) and antioxidants; thus, it is logical to assume that they are beneficial for health. May be so. However, if we have a predisposition to gain excess weight, then we can safely assume that fruits will only exacerbate this problem, and will not help to cope with it.
The most harmful food for us in this regard is sugar itself - especially sucrose (table sugar) and high fructose corn syrup. Health authorities and journalists have recently begun attacking high fructose corn syrup as the cause of the obesity epidemic. It was introduced in 1978 and by the mid-1980s had replaced sugar in most soft drinks in the US. Total consumption of sugar ("caloric sweeteners," as they were called by the USDA to distinguish them from "no-calorie" artificial sweeteners) rapidly increased from 55 kilograms per person to 68 kilograms a year, as Americans were unaware of thethat high fructose corn syrup is just another type of sugar. But that's exactly what it is. I am going to call it sugar in the future, because it is not much different from it. Sucrose, the white granular substance we add to our coffee or tea, is half glucose and half fructose. High fructose corn syrup, in the form in which we most often get it in juices, sodas and fruit yogurts, consists of 55% fructose (which is why it is called in the food industry HFCS-55, HFCS-55), 42% from glucose and another 3% from other types of carbohydrates.
It is the fructose in these sweeteners that makes them sweet, just as it makes fruits sweet, and it is fructose that seems to contribute the most to fat gain, thus being detrimental to our health. The American Heart Association, in conjunction with other health authorities, has recently - better late than never - begun to consider fructose, and thus table sugar, and high fructose corn syrup, as a cause of obesity and possibly even heart and vascular disease, however they did so based solely on the idea that these sweeteners are "empty calories," meaning they contain no vitamins, minerals, or antioxidants.
Be that as it may, this approach cannot be called correct. Fructose does have adverse health effects—including making you gain weight—but it has little to do with vitamin or antioxidant deficiencies and has much more to do with how your body metabolizes it. That sugar It is approximately half fructose and half glucose, making it probably a particularly effective weight gainer.
When we digest the carbohydrates found in starch, they end up in the blood as glucose. Sugar levels rise, insulin is released, and calories are stored as fat. When we digest sugar or high fructose corn syrup, most of the glucose is in circulation in the body, thus increasing blood sugar levels. The difference between fructose, however, lies in the fact that it is processed mainly in the liver, in which the enzymes necessary for this are formed. Thus, fructose does not have any immediate effects on blood sugar and insulin levels, but the key word is "instant" - it has quite a few long-term effects.
The human body, and in particular the liver, has never evolved enough to handle the massive amounts of fructose that we face in today's dietary patterns. The fructose content of fruits is relatively low - only thirty calories in a glass of blueberries, for example. (Some fruits, however, have been bred