Does the name Gary Taubes ring a bell? He made a huge splash back in 2002 with an article in the New York Times called "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?," which detailed the appalling lack of science behind the decades-long push toward fat-restricted diets. Several years additional research led to the 2007 release of Good Calories, Bad Calories, easily the most important nutrition book of the decade.

It's a tad technical -- Taubes is an award-winning science writer after all -- but absolutely worth your time and effort. If you ever, ever doubt that your low carb diet is a good idea, read it! If your doctor is giving you a hard time about your low carb diet, give him or her a copy and say "I'll talk to you again after you've read this." And if you just love great books about health and nutrition -- I do! -- it has to be the top of your must-read list, if you haven't read it already.

Anyway, Taubes is speaking in Columbia, Missouri this week, once for the general public, and another time specifically for doctors and other health professionals. I've been invited to both events, and I'm so excited I can barely contain myself. Plus I'm going to meet Jimmy and Christine Moore, and see Regina and Gil Wilshire who run theCarbohydrate Awareness Council, and a bunch of the rest of the Low Carb Mafia (snerk!)

Fun! Okay, it's Big Ol' Nutrition Geek Fan Girl fun. But fun!