I’m 6 feet tall and weigh 195 pounds on a good day—and it ain’t muscle. I wish I weighed 20 pounds less. At a few points in the last five years, I have. The rest of the time, I eat dessert. I like dessert. I also like homemade bread, which, unfortunately, my wife makes frequently.

So I often find the scale in the 190-200 lb. range, and I don’t like that. I exercise sometimes, but I’m not convinced that exercise is as important to good health as is one’s diet. Does exercise hurt? No, it makes me feel good and look better. But as the increase in the recommended amount of weekly exercise each person should get has risen, my interest in keeping up has slackened. You mean I can achieve and maintain a shapely physique if I only spend 2 hours a day, five days a week at the gym? DON’T sign me up! 

So I watch what I eat. And I read about what I should eat. Like you, I spent years scratching my head as one study seemed to contradict the previous study. What’s good for us? What’s bad? What’s good for us that we’ve been told is bad (eggs)? What might be bad for us that we’ve been told is good (margarine)?

My eyes have been opened by reading Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” Taubes is not a scientist but he is a science journalist. His dissection of the major studies used to support the current tenets of the nutrition industry is an eye-opener. Highlighting the completely ignored minority reports from these studies, Taubes finds a thread that indicates that the whole truth on these matters hasn’t been reported. Instead, a group-think medical culture has latched onto evidence that is far from foolproof, and rammed it down our collective throats.

Publishers Weekly says Taubes “begins by showing how public health data has been misinterpreted to mark dietary fat and cholesterol as the primary causes of coronary heart disease. Deeper examination, he says, shows that heart disease and other diseases of civilization appear to result from increased consumption of refined carbohydrates: sugar, white flour and white rice. … Taube's arguments are lucid and well supported by lengthy notes and bibliography. His call for dietary advice that is based on rigorous science, not century-old preconceptions about the penalties of gluttony and sloth is bound to be echoed loudly by many readers.”

He has at least one major fan. I’ve seen my triglyceride levels crater as I’ve moved away from sugar, white flour and white rice, and toward whole foods—eggs and butter included! Let’s not even start a discussion about fat—saturated or otherwise. Or the many benefits of eating “real food” rather than the processed stuff so popular among low-fat dieters.

Haven’t we been miserable enough, long enough to be open to reconsideration of what is and isn’t healthy?

I continue to go to the gym—although my frequency has dropped with the birth of my fourth child—and I take a few doctor-approved supplements in an attempt to assuage him that I’m doing all I can to keep my cholesterol levels from rising to a point where he might get (more) nervous.

The time for my next checkup is approaching. Maybe it’ll prove all of my skeptical friends right. Maybe I’ll be a prime candidate for a heart attack at age 37. If so, believe me: I’ll hear about it.

Or maybe I’ll be in good health, with acceptable cholesterol levels, and very low triglycerides. That’s what happened last time, and the time before that. And when I trumpeted those facts, guess how many minds I changed? Zero. But that’s the power of our nutrition gurus.