The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

Nina Teicholz

May 2014 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Erin Bennett

About this audiobook

A New York Times bestsellerNamed one of The Economist’s Books of the Year 2014Named one of The Wall Street Journal’s Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2014Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014Forbes’s Most Memorable Healthcare Book of 2014In The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health. Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk!

For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of “bad” saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat “heart healthy” fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation’s health has declined. What is going on?

In The Big Fat Surprise, Teicholz reveals how sixty years of nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers have made basic scientific mistakes that, through a mix of ego and bias, allow dangerous misrepresentations to become dogma, and how scientists who dared oppose this consensus have been ostracized. For eight years, Teicholz has pored over the massive research literature and interviewed hundreds of leading experts to unravel the shockingly distorted claims of nutrition studies. She brings these researchers to life and shows how their ambitions, loyalties, and rivalries have undermined a field of research already full of difficult pitfalls.

With a lively narrative style akin to Michael Pollan’s in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the scientific rigor of Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, Teicholz convincingly upends the conventional wisdom about all fats. Her groundbreaking claim is that more dietary fat leads to better health, wellness, and fitness. Science shows that reducing the saturated fat in our diets has been disastrous for our health as a nation, and we can, guilt-free, welcome these “whole fats” back into our lives.

Ratings and reviews

This "food writer" dances around the truth. She gives no numbers behind her claim . I don't know if she's read the China study and found it as convincing? Or read about the Masai tribe; who are heavy meat eaters, walk 19 miles daily, but only live to about age 40. Or about foreign peoples that are highly healthy, and 10 years after they move to America, they develop common American diseases. Why? Saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and even over consumption of monounsaturated fat. Found in animal products and all our common oils.

Extremely well written and accurate assessment of the research that has defined our dietary guidelines for decades. She is truly a pioneer in her approach to tackling the issue of needed reform in the ways in which we present, evaluate and implement U.S. dietary guidelines.

Teicholz does a great job at exposing how much of our nutritional dogma is built upon biased, poorly done research.

About the author

Nina Teicholz has written for Gourmet magazine, the New Yorker, the Economist, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. She also covered Latin America for National Public Radio. She lives in New York with her husband and two sons.

Erin Bennett is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based voice actress whose passion for storytelling informs her love of narrating audiobooks. An AudioFile Earphones winner, she has recorded 130 titles for Penguin Random House, Hachette, Harper, Blackstone, Recorded Books, Tantor, Deyan, Dreamscape, and Audible, among others. Her genres vary widely, from literary fiction to mysteries to science fiction to memoir, as well as nonfiction, multicast recordings, and romance. Her recent on-camera work includes Grandfathered on FOX and Children's Hospital on Adult Swim, and her voice-over work spans animation, radio plays for the BBC, video games, and commercials for radio and television.