[1][2] He is the author of Nobel Dreams (1987); Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion (1993); Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007), titled The Diet Delusion (2008) in the UK and Australia; Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (2010); The Case Against Sugar (2016); and The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating (2020).
[7][clarification needed] Taubes gained prominence in the low-carb diet debate following the publication of his 2002 New York Times Magazine piece "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?".
"[13][14] Taubes' argument is that the medical community and the U.S. federal government have relied upon misinterpreted scientific data on nutrition to build the prevailing paradigm about what constitutes healthful eating.
Taubes argues that — contrary to conventional nutritional science — it is a carbohydrate-laced diet, augmented with sugar, that leads to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, and other "maladies of civilization."
[19] Food journalist Joanna Blythman also praised the book, noting "his clear and persuasive argument that obesity is a hormonal disorder, switched on by sugar, is one that urgently needs wider airing.
"[20] Harriet Hall, who is known as a skeptic in the medical community, wrote that Taubes made a compelling case against sugar but the evidence was inconclusive.
[21] C. Albert Yeung in the Journal of Public Health described the book as very informative but insufficient to draw any conclusion and a "polemic, not a balanced scientific review.
"[22] In September, 2012, Taubes and Peter Attia launched the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), a nonprofit organization they described as "a Manhattan Project-like effort to solve" the problem of obesity.
[23] The project set out to validate the "carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis", a model by which carbohydrate is proposed to be uniquely fattening because of its influence on insulin levels.
[24] A pilot study funded by NuSI was conducted in 2014 by a team led by NIH researcher Kevin Hall, and produced evidence which did not support the hypothesis.