Books like The Case Against Sugar

01

Good Calories, Bad Calories

Gary Taubes · Health

Good Calories, Bad Calories is Gary Taubes's five-hundred-page argument that the conventional wisdom on diet and weight — specifically the idea that fat makes you fat and that eating less while exercising more is the path to weight loss — is not only wrong but has been maintained in the face of decades of contradictory evidence.

Both dig into obesity.

02

The Obesity Code

Jason Fung · Health

The Obesity Code is Jason Fung's argument that obesity is a hormonal disease, not a behavioral one, and that the treatment follows from that understanding.

Shares obesity and metabolic disease with The Case Against Sugar.

03

The China Study

T. Colin Campbell · Health

The China Study is T.

Both dig into food industry.

04

80/20 Running

Matt Fitzgerald · Health

80/20 Running is Matt Fitzgerald's evidence-based argument that the most common mistake recreational runners make is training too hard, too often.

A kindred health read.

05

In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan · Health

In Defense of Food opens with seven words that amount to a quiet provocation: Eat food.

A kindred health read.

06

Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser · Science

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is one of the most consequential pieces of American investigative journalism of the early twenty-first century.

Shares food industry and public health with The Case Against Sugar.

07

Salt Sugar Fat

Michael Moss · Science

Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, spent four years inside the processed food industry to produce Salt Sugar Fat.

Shares food industry and public health with The Case Against Sugar.

08

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Robert Whitaker · Health

Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.

Both dig into public health.

09

The Complete Guide to Fasting

Jason Fung · Health

Jason Fung is a Canadian nephrologist who became convinced that the conventional dietary advice given to type 2 diabetics — eat less, eat frequently, reduce fat — was not only ineffective but was contributing to the disease it was meant to treat.

Both dig into obesity.

10

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre · Science

Bad Science is Ben Goldacre's dissection of how scientific evidence gets misrepresented, distorted, and invented in the service of selling health products, generating media coverage, and protecting bad actors from accountability.

Both dig into public health.

11

Spillover

David Quammen · Science

Spillover is David Quammen's exhaustive investigation into zoonotic disease — illness that jumps from animals to humans — and the ecological and evolutionary logic behind why such spillover events happen.

Both dig into public health.

12

The Coming Plague

Laurie Garrett · Science

The Coming Plague, published in 1994, is Laurie Garrett's argument that the era of conquest over infectious disease declared in the 1960s was a dangerous illusion, and that the conditions for catastrophic new pandemics were already in place.

Both dig into public health.