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What if fat does not make you fat? That is the question scientific journalist Gary Taubes asked in a 2002 New York Times article that challenged 60 years of conventional wisdom.

Taubes has now carried the concept further. In the year 2007, he published an expose on the junk science and failed public policy of the nation's low-fat, low-cholesterol diets. This siege has undoubtedly cost the beef industry millions, perhaps billions, of dollars.

Taubes' 500-page best-selling 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' examines thousands of science projects and then states that animal fats are not the problem of our obese and chronically ill society, but carbohydrates are.

Good Calories, Bad Calories examines the diet and health conundrum as Taubes follows research clear back to the late 1800s. In those early years, even with limited scientific testing available, Taubes documents that science was already linking refined carbohydrates and starchy foods with weight problems. Also with "chronic diseases of civilisation" such as diabetes.