Butter is healthier than margarine. Diet soda does not cause cancer. Unless you have celiac disease, gluten-free food is a waste of money. Drinking alcohol, in moderation, is , for most people, healthier than being a teetotaler. Eggs are, not only not bad for you, but are a great source of needed protein. Having an allergic reaction to MSG in Chinese restaurants is, largely, a myth.
These counterintuitive ideas can be found in Dr. Aaron Carroll’s book, The Bad Food Bible. Carroll has spent years examining a plethora of nutrition studies and has found the majority seriously flawed. Most are not randomized-controlled trials and so do not prove causality. Many have small or non- representative sample sizes. A surprising number of often cited studies were done over a very short time period.
A large percentage of trials are done on animals whose metabolism can be quite different from our own. In addition, the animals in these studies are frequently given far higher proportions of foods than humans would ever consume. And, of course, some studies are funded by food industry groups and are thus marred by conflicts of interest. You may be old enough to remember the tobacco industry studies, from the 1960s, that showed smoking does not cause cancer.
The findings from these dubious research projects often get reported by the mass media as established facts. When a new study comes out, contradicting a previous one, the media reports it as factual as well. So it is not surprising that many people are unsure of what to eat and what to avoid. To such wary consumers, The Bad Food Bible will come as a relief.
Carroll devotes a chapter to each of a series of “bad foods” and shows how the harmful attributes of them are, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, are completely false.
In the end, Carroll repeats the same recommendations we learned in our middle school health classes. We should eat a balanced diet, with moderate portions and combine diet with some exercise.
The Bad Food Bible should reassure readers that the food we put in our bodies is not that bad for us provided we do not over do it.

Very straightforward. I enjoyed how he showed how research can be presented by the media to influence the population.

This book is reassuring, in that most foods are ok in moderation. It does point out how what people were once told was true is actually false, and that much of what is being hyped now is also not as big a deal as it is made out to be. That being said, I'm still going to steer my family towards a healthier diet, but I won't worry that they do occasionally eat junk food (and I will still try to steer them towards "better" junk food choices)!

A fascinating guide to all the best foods in life, which seem to regularly get torn down for being death-delivering, artery-clogging, heart-attack-inducing, diabetes-causing, etc etc death on a plate. All the greats are in here - Butter, Salt, Meat, Alcohol... I'm salivating just thinking about them!
This book is great on many levels - for starters it gives clear explanations about the difference between all the different types of research carried out and why in most cases, the evidence provided should be taken with a big pinch of salt (unless you have an allergy).
Ultimately, in most cases, the bottom line is that a little bit of everything is fine, and that danger lies in excessive consumption of most things. Hardly ground-breaking statements, but seemingly something that a lot of people in this world need to embrace judging by the faddy diets, diet hacks, etc etc that are constantly doing the rounds.
Obviously, if you have an allergy to certain types of food, then you should avoid, but apart from that, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you actually probably won't die. A really fascinating and reassuring read. Highly recommended.

Excellent book. This book is educational and interesting about the myths of our current time about nutrition.

As an adult picky eater, I often worry that I eat too much of the bad foods and not enough of the good foods. This book eased my mind and reduced some anxiety about what I eat. The author does a great job explaining the history, studies, and misconceptions of the many foods that we've been told to avoid for our health, and he provides justification as to why it's okay to eat these same foods in moderation. The book is comprehensive and gets scientific at times, but it's still an enjoyable and interesting book to read. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

You are what you eat and wondering what foods you should eat and shouldn’t is very important. I love this book since it breaks down many foods that you have been told to avoid into why they might be good for you after all. Basically, I learned everything is fine in moderation. Very good reference book.

If you went around believing all the doom and gloom stories about food that is bad for you, you might starve to death. Carroll, a doctor, writer and health researcher wants to help us cut through the headlines and focus on the facts about many foods that we eat.

If we only look at news stories, or Twitter feeds, or headlines, we don't see the whole picture. Carroll begins by setting the stage for us taking us into the world of nutritional studies, what they mean, and how reliable they are as a basis of decisions.

He then looks at many of those "sinful" foods from coffee to gluten and looks at them, at the research, and at what it means. While he never discounts real health problems associated with foods, he wants us to cut through the hype we see all around us so that we can make decisions based on fact not on the tweetings of a celebrity.

Unlike so many books on scientific subjects, this book is easy to read. Carroll explains scientific concepts clearly and enlivens his text with anecdotes and side comments.

Now pardon me while I go off and have some caffeine.

You aren’t what you eat

There are two points to The Bad Food Bible. Medical studies should not be used to make food decisions, and you should go ahead and eat whatever you want.

Dr. Aaron Carroll says there is a hierarchy of food studies, and the most reliable are the rarest. But regardless, their results are not to be taken at face value. The media misinterpret the findings, and you can find a study to prove just about anything you desire. There are no definitive answers. The state of our nutritional knowledge seems to be worthless.

As for food, everything is fine in moderation, so don’t bother worrying about what you eat. With cow’s milk, for example, Carroll says we need it for our breakfast cereal, and cookies without milk is just not supportable. Save meat with a lot of fat for special occasions. He allows his own children “four or five” sugar-free soft drinks a week. He says with mercury-laden tuna, you must decide for yourself how much poison you and your children can handle, and adjust your consumption as desired: “Think for yourself and eat accordingly”, he says. This is extraordinarily strange advice in the nutrition field.

Points to ponder:
-Gluten-free is a pointless and expensive fad. One tenth of one percent have gluten issues.
-Genetically modified organisms have been around for as long we have farmed and there is no reason to even try to eliminate them.
-Alcohol is more beneficial than it is damaging. Red wine in particular raises good HDL.
-Eating fat won’t make you fat.
-Eating cholesterol won’t raise your cholesterol.
-Coffee is “shockingly good for you”; it’s practically a miracle drug. And it does not stunt growth or dehydrate you.
-The empty calories in diet soft drinks are better than the empty calories from added sugar drinks, because artificial sweeteners won’t kill you.
-MSG is a perfectly natural, and critically necessary body chemical, present in everything from tomatoes to breast milk. It has never been shown to be toxic as a flavor enhancer.
-Science is having no success telling organic from non-organic produce.
-Organic produce is not nutritionally superior.

Carroll doesn’t venture into two of the perversions in nutrition research. Rat studies take animals predisposed to certain diseases and overload them with foods or chemicals to see how they fare. By law since 1964, if cancer resulted, the chemical had to be banned. Thus saccharine became a carcinogen. Didn’t matter that a human would have had to drink a hundred diet sodas a day for two years to absorb the same amount they pumped into the rats, it was cancer and it had to go. This is the same reasoning that has led to zero new wonder drugs for tuberculosis since the 1960s. TB doesn’t manifest in rats the way it does it humans, so new drugs can never pass the mandatory rat test. But I digress.

The other is our near total lack of understanding of how our bodies work. We now think gut bacteria manufacture all the vitamins we need on demand, and consuming them as chemicals is worthless. The same goes for food-borne cholesterol. The cholesterol in our blood comes from our own livers, not eggs or burgers. Carroll also skims over the massive chemical content of meat, red or white. Meat might not be as harmful as some say, but the antibiotics and other medicines and hormones in them are. Carroll says enjoy.

That the state of nutritional medicine is this torn and uncertain should be worrying all by itself. Carroll makes a lot of good arguments, but they don’t add any degree of certainty about what to eat. And he admits that. (He is currently experimenting with a low carb diet for himself.) For those who believe if you don’t recognize the ingredient then it’s not food – this book is not going to go down well. If you’re open to rational analysis with a splash of adventure, this is for you.

David Wineberg