Made me more skeptical... which was not really necessary given that I'm already pretty skeptical.
However, I had recently fallen quite hard for the low-carb-high-fat arguments, and this book made me pull back from that a bit.
Note that this book focuses on weight loss as the end result of any (small-d) diet.
While I am looking at ways to promote healthy body, including cholesterol, muscle and bone mass, etc - which are not addressed in this book in any way.
After reading this book, I do need to research a little bit more. ( )

Much diet and health advice is based on the type of faith more often seen in churches and synagogues than in scientific laboratories, so I'm glad that at last we get a health book by a professor of religion! He shows convincingly why today's popular Paleo, anti-gluten, and other restrictive diets are just the latest in a long line of overhyped attempts to explain something that is far too complicated for our human minds to comprehend.

With good overviews of MSG, Sugar, Fat, Salt, and more, he shows the flimsiness of the evidence that has been used to explain why these things are bad. The final two chapters (highlighted in darker pages) should be required reading of anyone trying to decipher a modern health/diet book: one chapter convincingly explains his new theory for the real cause of obesity in America, and then in the final chapter he refutes himself line by line in a devastating takedown showing the all-too-familiar pseudo-scientific language that deceives us.

see a on my blog. ( )

Entertaining look at food fads and why we shouldn't take them too seriously. As a gluten-sensitive person I know all about actual food issues and this book is a good antidote to a lot of the food paranoid books I've read over the last while.

Sometimes I think he doesn't see that sometimes people's paranoia is justified. That monocultures of foods in order to make the maximum profit is putting our food in danger and that sometimes a little paranoia is a good thing. Still it was a good read and I liked the Diet and it's breakdown. ( )

I love gluten, fat, sugar and salt, and think dieting and cleansing are a crock, so this seemed right up my alley. However, as a work, it was just so disjointed and slapped together...it's like the author just keeps repeating his same "truths" over and over and over and over and over and over (yeah, just like that). It's also very clear this isn't a scientific work, in that the author has a clear and obvious bias. He's not trying to be neutral or impartial - he's got an axe to grind, and boy does he grind away. Wish I had thrown in the towel after chapter one rather than wading through the rest of this toxic mess. ( )

I have to say, first off, I really hate the packaging on this book. You look at it, you see the title, the cover, and you think this is another fad-diet debunking book. Which would be awesome: fad-diet-debunking books are generally fun. But this is not your run-of-the-mill diet-myth book. Levinovitz's Ph.D isn't in biochemistry or anything like that: it's in religion (he's a professor of Chinese religious traditions), and he starts the book off with another group who disdained grains: ancient Chinese monks. He knows his mythologies.

There is a heavy emphasis on proper scientific research in this book, but also an historical context to the ways that our food mythologies have played out over time, including a 55-page analysis of a sample fad-diet promo. I think he could have done better: the emphasis on the science is so heavy that I felt it displaced some of the unique expertise that Levinovitz brings to the space (perhaps he felt he needed to prove the legitimacy of his perspective?). Still, it is an excellent book. ( )