New round of praise for ‘Big Fat Surprise’

It’s that time of year, and top 10 lists of everything, including books, are being released.

One title that keeps popping up? “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet” by Nina Teicholz (Simon & Schuster, $27.99).

“Big Fat Surprise” is being touted as one of the must-reads of 2014. The Economist put it on its Page Turners for the year (“eloquent in its argument”). Kirkus chose Teicholz’s book as one of the year’s best (“how the fats in the American diet grew horns and cloven hooves”) and the New York Times best-seller is on the best nonfiction picks of the Wall Street Journal (“Teicholz has a gift for translating complex data into an engaging forensic narrative.”) In October, when the Library Journal offered its selection of the year’s best books, it included “Big Fat Surprise.”

Locally Don Maurer’s Lean and Lovin’ It column in the Daily Herald on best books for cooks gave “Big Fat Surprise” a plug (he called it a “paradigm-shifting page-turner.”)

Author Nina Teicholz ~ Laura Rose Photo

I don’t want to say I told you so. (OK, I lie, I do want to say that.) When I finished “Big Fat Surprise,” I was convinced it was a book anyone who is at all interested in nutrition should read, which is why I wrote a column about it this summer.

Before you embark on the same diet (low fat/high carbs) on Jan. 1, only to fail at that resolution to lose any weight one more time, I strongly suggest you read “The Big Fat Surprise.” Teicholz shows how the science to ban saturated fats and embrace carbs never was good to begin with, but strong-willed personalities and well, ambition, got the better of things. The result? We as a nation have gotten fatter and sicker.

Teicholz does a wonderful job of dissecting the facts. “Big Fat Surprise” is an informative and lively book. Give it a read.