Gary Taubes on assuming 'healthy' whole-food diets work for everyone: warns against

Gary Taubes warns against assuming that a textbook “healthy” diet works for everyone. He says a person can eat fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, avoid obvious junk food, and still gain weight or remain metabolically unhealthy if they are carbohydrate-intolerant — so blanket advice fails the insulin-resistant. He made the argument in his 2026 LowCarbUSA interview and touched on it in his June 2026 Atlantic essay.

His stated reasoning: because, in his view, the hormonal response to carbohydrate varies between individuals, dietary advice that ignores that variation can leave carbohydrate-intolerant people worse off even when they follow every conventional recommendation. He presents this as the practical consequence of his carbohydrate–insulin model: advice has to account for the body’s response, not just the food’s reputation.

This page reports Taubes’s position as he states it; it is not medical advice.

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.