The stupid explodes: obesity now a disability

[marplots]

(selectively snipped)I understand that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. I get that. But there are other factors in the foods you eat than just simply "calories."
...
When a person says that "not all calories are equal," what they are talking about is the nutritional value of a particular type of food. What Edx posted about, was the nutritional value of carbs and sugars vs the nutritional value of things like fiber and vitamins.

Yes, but all you are saying is that "not all foods are equal" - no one disputes that.

One person can eat a 2000 calorie diet full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and proteins over the course of a year. Another person can eat a 2000 calorie diet full of sugars and carbs over the course of the year. Who is much likelier to start getting fat, and generally be unhealthy? Who is more likely to begin developing addictive behavior after that year? Who is more likely to start consuming more and more calories each day beyond a year? One will remain healthy, the other will likely become obese, and their mind and body will never be the same again.

So no. It is not at all helpful to sit there and simply say: "Calories in, calories out. It's easy!" No. It is much harder, and more complex than that.

I don't think anyone really disputes that people metabolize food differently either (although the significance of the fact might be argued).

In medicine, this variability problem comes up all the time. One way to deal with it, and what I'm suggesting in weight loss, is by titration. Whatever the dial is "set at" for a particular person's metabolism, that becomes the base rate. You then titrate against that.

In practice, it means not changing the calorie source from baseline, but reducing calories. Keep the food the same, lower the amount consumed. The titration measure (the outcome measurement) is weight loss. It's done in a stepwise fashion, so that no single adjustment will be harmful. One could, for example, reduce calorie consumption (without changing food types) by 500 calories per day for a month. Did the patient lose weight? Stay with it until the weight stabilizes again. Adjust calories up or down depending on the results.

The advantage of titration is that it customizes consumption to a particular person. So long as they are stable in the way they metabolize food, it doesn't matter if they are efficient metabolizers or inefficient. By keeping the consumer and the consumed the same, the variable of interest can come to the fore: number of calories consumed. And, it no longer matters which type of calorie it happens to be, since the source of the calories also remains constant.

With titration, you reduce the complexities to a single number (two if we are looking at weight as the outcome).

None of the above addressed the psychological issues however.

 

[rustypouch]

That isn't at all the argument I was making. I am not saying that if you consume less calories than you burn, you will not lose weight.

My argument throughout this thread, was in defeating the notion that it is somehow "easy" to lose weight in a world full of refined sugary crap that makes you feel less satisfied than if the world were full of nutrient-rich foods that stick with you throughout your day.

It may be true that consuming less calories on a Twinkie diet than you burn, will cause you to lose weight. But it isn't anywhere near as easy to say that as you make it out to be. Those Twinkies are full of sugar, and it causes all sorts of chemical changes in your body, that also severely affects your brain chemistry. This causes other adverse effects, such as addictive behavior. And let's face it: You body certainly does treat those sugary Twinkies FAR differently than it would if you are fibrous broccoli instead. Even if the number of calories consumed were the same.

You're certainly mocking the idea of calories in vs. calories out, so I may have misinterpreted that to mean denial.

I fully agree that it's much easier to overeat with a diet of processed, high fat and salt food products than with mostly veggies and protein.

Also, is anyone claiming that weight loss is 'easy?' Yes, it's simple, but simple and easy are not the same thing.

 

[Nihilianth]

Yes, but all you are saying is that "not all foods are equal" - no one disputes that.

Then what, exactly, ius your argument against Edx's source, Taubes? That seems to be exactly what Taubes is talking about: That "not all foods are equal." Somehow, people are turning that argument into something it is not.

I don't think anyone really disputes that people metabolize food differently either (although the significance of the fact might be argued).

In medicine, this variability problem comes up all the time. One way to deal with it, and what I'm suggesting in weight loss, is by titration. Whatever the dial is "set at" for a particular person's metabolism, that becomes the base rate. You then titrate against that.

In practice, it means not changing the calorie source from baseline, but reducing calories. Keep the food the same, lower the amount consumed. The titration measure (the outcome measurement) is weight loss. It's done in a stepwise fashion, so that no single adjustment will be harmful. One could, for example, reduce calorie consumption (without changing food types) by 500 calories per day for a month. Did the patient lose weight? Stay with it until the weight stabilizes again. Adjust calories up or down depending on the results.

The advantage of titration is that it customizes consumption to a particular person. So long as they are stable in the way they metabolize food, it doesn't matter if they are efficient metabolizers or inefficient. By keeping the consumer and the consumed the same, the variable of interest can come to the fore: calories consumed. And, it no longer matters which type of calorie it happens to be, since the source of the calories also remains constant.

With titration, you reduce the complexities to a single number (two if we are looking at weight as the outcome).

None of the above addressed the psychological issues however.

This is actually a good post. Thank you. That's how I have gotten back to the weight I was in my early 20s. (I hit a high of 290 lbs at the age of 29. Back down to 220, and stronger than ever at the age of 31.)

I did a step-down on my diet. First, was cutting out soda altogether, and replacing it with either water or unsweetened tea. Those calories did not even need to be replaced, as they were completely useless. Drinking soda does nothing for satiety. So I both cut sugar, and calories right away.

I then cut out those bags of chips after a couple of mionths, again, getting rid of more useless calories, along with carbs and extraneous fats.

Eventually, I was able to wean myself onto a healthy diet, and started working out again.

I'm glad you added the portion about psychological issues at the end. I do not have an addictive behavior, thank god. But so many people do.

 

[Nihilianth]

You're certainly mocking the idea of calories in vs. calories out, so I may have misinterpreted that to mean denial.

I fully agree that it's much easier to overeat with a diet of processed, high fat and salt food products than with mostly veggies and protein.

Also, is anyone claiming that weight loss is 'easy?' Yes, it's simple, but simple and easy are not the same thing.

Actually, The Atheist (I think?) did a while back. I hadn't posted in about a 2-week period. But this thread did not progress very far since my brief hiatus.

The argument that I was making all along, was against the argument that was profusely (and seriously) defended that "it is far easier to lose weight, than to gain weight."

 

[marplots]

Then what, exactly, ius your argument against Edx's source, Taubes? That seems to be exactly what Taubes is talking about: That "not all foods are equal." Somehow, people are turning that argument into something it is not.

I don't know Taube or his/her stuff all that well. But I gather, from what I've read here, that the problem is one of misplaced significance, not so much factual errors.

It reminds me of the audiophile stuff we sometimes see. There are many things that degrade signals and there are many things which improve sound quality. But the things they focus on are at the fringe and, for nearly everyone, don't matter a hill of beans.

If we were talking about optimizing a diet for a top-tier Olympic athlete, I could (maybe) see where all the fuss might pay off. But for Joe Blow Six-pack and me, it's not going to matter much. What we need is some serious cuts in consumption, not minor tweaks in sources. We need a canon, not a delicate scalpel.

And that's what I find irritating - a focus on nuances and details with barely a nod toward the big picture.

 

[jimbob]

I don't know Taube or his/her stuff all that well. But I gather, from what I've read here, that the problem is one of misplaced significance, not so much factual errors.

It reminds me of the audiophile stuff we sometimes see. There are many things that degrade signals and there are many things which improve sound quality. But the things they focus on are at the fringe and, for nearly everyone, don't matter a hill of beans.

If we were talking about optimizing a diet for a top-tier Olympic athlete, I could (maybe) see where all the fuss might pay off. But for Joe Blow Six-pack and me, it's not going to matter much. What we need is some serious cuts in consumption, not minor tweaks in sources. We need a canon, not a delicate scalpel.

And that's what I find irritating - a focus on nuances and details with barely a nod toward the big picture.

There is this from Blutoski too, which would raise warning flags:

Taubes has recently gone what I call 'full Duesberg' - undaunted by being unable to collect scientific support for his hypothesis, he has doubled down. He's set up his own research to crank out the results he wished he could find in the literature.

For those who are interested: Taubes' research nonprofit (Nutrition Science Initiative) has a website here: [nusi.org]

 

[blutoski]

I don't know Taube or his/her stuff all that well. But I gather, from what I've read here, that the problem is one of misplaced significance, not so much factual errors.

No, he's published several critically important factual errors, unfortunately. That's what leads to my first complaint - that he has sown confusion. It's not that his books are rife with errors, just that the few howlers are really high impact. Specifically, he literally claimed that calories don't matter in books, articles, and interviews. That's not paraphrasing or misconstruing or misquoting or out of context or strawperson. Did he really mean it? Possibly not: he has also said in other books articles and interviews that calories sort of do matter. It's what skeptics describe as the Jeane Dixon strategy.

So my first complaint is really that he has fostered mass confusion about the meaningfulness of calories in weight management. He didn't invent the idea that macronutrient ratios are more important than calorie surplus as a cause of obesity. There were many before him (Atkins, for example), and there will probably be many after. But he's part of that specific problem.

I would say that it's more his omissions that are important. Neglecting to mention that Americans are eating about the same macronutrient ratios as they were 100 years ago, for example. He certainly implies that there's been a tendency to eat a significantly higher percentage of carbs and that this explains the obesity epidemic. Another example is neglecting to mention that calorie estimates on labels attempt to account for bioavailability. Dieticians have developed complex formulas for converting the bomb calorimeter results into best estimates of how many calories will end up in the body, and are fully aware of this. He implies that CICO has not been adequately tested, even though it's been tested in different independent ways and the model remains a very good explanation.

To readers who didn't know these facts, his model for obesity epidemic is persuasive.
To readers who are actually aware of these facts, the model sounds more like an hypothesis looking for a problem to solve. This is the way the majority of professionals regard it right now.

It reminds me of the audiophile stuff we sometimes see. There are many things that degrade signals and there are many things which improve sound quality. But the things they focus on are at the fringe and, for nearly everyone, don't matter a hill of beans.

If we were talking about optimizing a diet for a top-tier Olympic athlete, I could (maybe) see where all the fuss might pay off. But for Joe Blow Six-pack and me, it's not going to matter much. What we need is some serious cuts in consumption, not minor tweaks in sources. We need a canon, not a delicate scalpel.

And that's what I find irritating - a focus on nuances and details with barely a nod toward the big picture.

That's where I am at this point. The analogy is "Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic."

We know 90% of what we need to know about weight management. The other 10% includes 'interesting' or 'plausible hypotheses that deserve research resources' or even just plain 'academic footnote'. A lot is discussion along the lines of political distractions from any scientific claims.

But that last 10% is where the discussion concentrates, because it's where the money is for a mix of reasons. This is the world of DSHEA: concentrate on form/function claims if 'real world' health claims are not supported. There are 95,134 books with the word 'diet' in them on Amazon right now.

The Atheist aside, I don't think anybody else is claiming that CICO = "it's easy". CICO is a simple concept, sure, but does not describe any particular weight management strategy. However, CICO is instrumental in devising a weight management strategy. Registered Dieticians generally go the opposite way: CICO is a simple concept, but it's the result of many factors that interact. Genetics, Commercial Environment, Upbringing/habits, and tacit Knowledge about weight management.

 

[blutoski]

Actually, The Atheist (I think?) did a while back. I hadn't posted in about a 2-week period. But this thread did not progress very far since my brief hiatus.

The argument that I was making all along, was against the argument that was profusely (and seriously) defended that "it is far easier to lose weight, than to gain weight."

I think that was just The Atheist. And it was a fallacious argument strategy called 'false equivocation' - using a word in an incorrect way to confuse meaning.

Losing weight is 'less work' than gaining weight in the same way that doing differential equations is 'easier' than walking to the can, because it uses fewer calories.

But nobody thinks losing weight is 'less work' than gaining weight in terms of mental effort.

Weight management is a challenge that has defeated the brightest and strongest willed among us.

 

[blutoski]

Yes, but all you are saying is that "not all foods are equal" - no one disputes that.



I don't think anyone really disputes that people metabolize food differently either (although the significance of the fact might be argued).

In medicine, this variability problem comes up all the time. One way to deal with it, and what I'm suggesting in weight loss, is by titration. Whatever the dial is "set at" for a particular person's metabolism, that becomes the base rate. You then titrate against that.

In practice, it means not changing the calorie source from baseline, but reducing calories. Keep the food the same, lower the amount consumed. The titration measure (the outcome measurement) is weight loss. It's done in a stepwise fashion, so that no single adjustment will be harmful. One could, for example, reduce calorie consumption (without changing food types) by 500 calories per day for a month. Did the patient lose weight? Stay with it until the weight stabilizes again. Adjust calories up or down depending on the results.

The advantage of titration is that it customizes consumption to a particular person. So long as they are stable in the way they metabolize food, it doesn't matter if they are efficient metabolizers or inefficient. By keeping the consumer and the consumed the same, the variable of interest can come to the fore: number of calories consumed. And, it no longer matters which type of calorie it happens to be, since the source of the calories also remains constant.

With titration, you reduce the complexities to a single number (two if we are looking at weight as the outcome).

None of the above addressed the psychological issues however.

Or environment, or upbringing/habits, and lastly tacit subject knowledge.

There's also the - in my opinion - overarching question of practicality. The titration approach doesn't work very well because it's extremely difficult to get accurate information about calorie intake and output. We have good ways to estimate plus or minus ten percent, but a systemic error has massive implications for a multiyear period (aka: a person's lifetime).

The second problem with 'pure' calorie counting is that even if we did have great estimates, we'd become dependent on that external cueing for management instead of hopefully getting closer to the ideal of eating freely without having to micromanage like that. That's the ultimate goal for registered dieticians: a population that can eat healthily without much effort.

The way I used calorie estimates with clients was more about proportion, so they could identify unexpected calorie blobs. Fruit juice was a big one. Alcohol. Soda. Salad dressing. There's something that happens when you show somebody that even with a 10% error, half their day's calories were liquid and of insignificant nutritional content.

For Registered Dieticians, weight management is multifactorial and always includes behavioral and educational strategies, even if CICO is the ultimate physical mechanism.

 

[blutoski]

I recommend you give him more of a shot than this. The person immediately misrepresents him, ironically while also talking about strawmen.

Here is the first few obvious failures on the part of the writer you linked me to:

1. He implies Taubes is saying the laws of physics don't have anything to do with weight gain. That is not what Taubes is saying.

She's not implying... that's what he's saying... she quoted a passage from the book where he's saying exactly that.

He is saying that it is not as simple as "calories in calories out" and the "law of thermodynamics" is not being applied correctly to the human body when people argue against what he is saying. It reminds me of evolution being said to break the law of thermodynamics, which it does, so long as you make false assumptions as to how the earth/universe works.

Yes, but now this is him quibbling because he said something flat out disproven and kind of silly.

And he has not made his case to somebody like myself. His arguments are poor.

I'll give you an example... he's implying that dieticians aren't taking thermic effect (ie: carbohydrates are more efficiently turned into body energy than fats or proteins) into account... but they are... so right there he lost credibility with me.

2. He says Taubes believes reducing calorie intake cannot work. This is also not accurate. As should should be clear from the example I gave earlier, it is not that reducing your calories won't necessarily cause weight loss it's just that it isn't getting to the root cause of why you are putting on weight. When we are growing we have growth hormone flowing through us and we eat more food to compensate for that. We can stunt our growth by reducing our caloric intake, but that doesnt mean eating was the reason for us growing, it was the growth hormone. We ate more because the growth hormone needed us to eat more.

I didn't find that claim in Dr. Hall's review, unless it's a rehash of point#1?

3. He talks about how some people are more efficient at storing calories than others, and even says Taubes is right when he says people get fat due to the way their fat is regulated, but then says that it's all still about how many calories you consume anyway. If you took two people with very similar body types and gave them the same food and they did the same exercise then the assumption of "calories in calories out" means we would have to assume they both get fat, or both lose weight, at more or less the same rate. Why? Because they would both be consuming more or less than the calories they were burning. Yet as this person already recognises some people have bodies that are very efficient at storing calories and handling fat regulation, and some are not. If an obese persons body is inefficient at storing fat and has a metabolic disorder, then telling them they are just eating too much completely misses the point of why it is happening. They may well be eating more, which could be due to their metabolic disorder making them eat more (the same way a growing child filled with growth hormone is driven to eat), or they could be eating the same thing a sedentary slim person eats who has a body that has a healthy metabolism. If it is the former, then just like with a growing child, maybe eating more is the symptom not the cause of their obesity. This is why its absurdity to reduce obesity and gaining fat merely to terms of "calories in calories out", which ends up being practically meaningless and hardly tells you anything.

Well, it's the mechanism of weight management.
I'm not sure what Taubes wants it to 'tell' him.

Taubes is really dependent on fighting a strawperson, unfortunately.

However, in his defense, Registered Dieticians are not out there publishing diet books, so the public is poorly prepared to recognize misrepresentation of their claims. Most laypersons learn about dietary recommendations from food packaging.

4. Skipping ahead he seems to be unaware of just how debunked the idea that fat's cause heart disease, especially in recent years.

Sort of. She's pointing out that low fat diets are associated with reductions in CVD. This was originally thought to be due to reduced fats. We have other explanations such as low fat = high vegetable now, but the point is that the benefits of that diet appear real. Having said that, this doesn't necessarily have much bearing on Taubes' claim I challenge in this thread about 'low fat diets' -> obesity epidemic.

This article does not seem like it is written by someone who has more than a superficial understanding of what Taubes is saying, or there is some intentional or subconscious tendency to misunderstand him.

And yet, I find no misunderstandings. I think she nailed it.

The author is Dr. Hall. Harriet's a 'she'. She has been working with diet for decades, as it was part of her responsibilities and research while in the Air Force. She's known as 'the skepdoc' and one of the most objective and knowledgeable skeptical MDs I've ever met. Aside from being a founder of Science Based Medicine, she spent years as the primary medical resource for CSICOP, and has been a frequent advisor for [Center for Science In The Public Interest].

She's getting close to retirement and reducing her currency, but this article was from 2011 and from what I can tell it's quite fair.

 

[Edx]

She's not implying... that's what he's saying... she quoted a passage from the book where he's saying exactly that.

Taubes has said and clarified over and over again that calories in calories out doesn't tell you anything meaningful, not that we can't apply the laws of physics to the human body. At this point I don't understand how anyone can honestly misunderstand this so fundamentally. Once again I give the following example: If we are talking about a growing child in puberty, we might ask why the child is growing. If we didn't know about growth hormone we'd observe the child eating more. If we reduced the calorie intake of the child we'd see this growth slow. If we then concluded that eating more calories was the reason for the growth we'd be wrong. It wasn't eating more calories that was the reason for the growth, it was growth hormone, eating more calories was simply the fuel that facilitated the growth. It is therefore meaningless to talk about the laws of thermodynamics here. It doesn't mean that the laws of physics aren't applicable to teenage pubescent growth, it's that it's meaningless to apply them so simplistically. It is not absurd to think we may have been mistaken about obesity in a similar way. So if someone has a metabolic disorder then eating less calories can still cause weight loss, but that doesn't mean we have solved the root cause of their weight gain which could be due to any number of disorders and diseases.

Well, it's the mechanism of weight management.
I'm not sure what Taubes wants it to 'tell' him.

Taubes is really dependent on fighting a strawperson, unfortunately.

I don't understand your point or what the "strawman" is. Hall says that "some people’s bodies are more efficient at storing calories", she says that "Taubes is "correct" when he says, “Those who get fat do so because of the way their fat is regulated.”" If there are people who have bodies that deal with calories better than others, then she understands there are those who have bodies that really don't deal with calories efficiently at all. This means one person can consume the same or less calories doing the same exercise to another, but one can put on fat while the other may not. That person who puts on weight then ends up obese, despite eating the same thing as someone who's metabolism is efficient. Is the number of calories then really the most important measure?

There is the other issue of how the body deals with proteins, cabs, and fats. Even if it is 100% about the calories, it would still be best to recommend a low carb diet. We know sugar can make you hungry faster, we know it releases dopamine similar to addictive drugs. Carbs all break down into glucose, it just depends on the speed it takes to do so. Some foods we think are healthy break down into glucose even faster than straight sugar! We know eating fat is satiating and does not spike your blood sugar, we know insulin stimulates fat cells to take in glucose. Reducing someone's appetite it not a trivial aspect of combating obesity and fat gain. If you change someone's diet to have the same number of calories but remove the sugar, and replace the carbs with fat, this should significantly reduce appetite and that person will feel more fulfilled as their body isn't driving them to eat more or eat sugar. I don't see what is crazy about that. A very low carb diet is not necessary for everyone (like the ketogenic diet) because not everyone is so sensitive to them, in the same way as not everyone needs to watch their carbs and sugar intake as much as a diabetic will. But if you are diabetic you better be very careful about your carbs and sugar intake because your body doesn't process them well.

she spent years as the primary medical resource for CSICOP, and has been a frequent advisor for [Center for Science In The Public Interest].

This doesn't impress me. These are the same people that said trans-fats were safe and should be used in place of animal fats, until they realised they were wrong about that and then the crusade was against trans fats. They also seem overly hyperbolic condemning a vast number of things, and using exaggerated rhetoric like describing things as "hearts attack on plates". They are just the kind of people that cause the public to distrust every pronouncement about a certain food being bad for them.

It's possible to lose weight eating mostly twinkies http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

Except the Twinkie diet guy was not really a "Twinkie diet". We'd think he was consuming just Twinkies, but he really wasn't. He had quite a wide number of foods he ate including protein shakes, vegetables and steak. His carbohydrate consumption wasn't actually that large. He also consumed about a 1,000 less calories than the average man. We also don't know if his weight loss would have stopped or reversed if he stayed /or went back to 2,500 calories eating more cabs. If you wanted to better test this you'd take someone who was already obese and give them a diet of 90% sugar at a calorie deficit of maybe 300 calories. Then do the same thing with a 90% fat diet with no sugar. If a calorie is a calorie and it's only calories that matter we should see them lose weight at the same rate. We should also look at their mental state and see how each of them deals with their diet and how they feel when on it. Is the fat-diet more satiating? Or is it the same? Even if they did lose weight the same rate, but fat was more satiating, then clearly that was a better choice. That is before we even talk about the idea that carbohydrates spike insulin and that is driving the body to store fat.

or nothing but McDonalds. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/mcdonalds-diet_n_4557698.html

It's been done before and done better.

 

[Nihilianth]

I think that was just The Atheist. And it was a fallacious argument strategy called 'false equivocation' - using a word in an incorrect way to confuse meaning.

Losing weight is 'less work' than gaining weight in the same way that doing differential equations is 'easier' than walking to the can, because it uses fewer calories.

But nobody thinks losing weight is 'less work' than gaining weight in terms of mental effort.

Weight management is a challenge that has defeated the brightest and strongest willed among us.

Right. That's what I say.

Now, you did say that "calories in, calories out" (Marplots used the acrnym "CICO"), is "simple" rather than "easy." That's a much better word choice. And it is a simple concept. I am, however, going to play devil's advocate for a moment:

You can also say: "In order to win a baseball game, all you have to do is score more run than the other team."

The concept is simple. Or rather, CICO is overly simplified, in the same way as the above statement about winning a baseball game is oversimplified. Getting there is complex. There are many other variable than just the number of calories. You must treat the entire mind and body in order to have any hope of getting someone obese, to not be.

 

[Nihilianth]

I don't know Taube or his/her stuff all that well. But I gather, from what I've read here, that the problem is one of misplaced significance, not so much factual errors.

It reminds me of the audiophile stuff we sometimes see. There are many things that degrade signals and there are many things which improve sound quality. But the things they focus on are at the fringe and, for nearly everyone, don't matter a hill of beans.

If we were talking about optimizing a diet for a top-tier Olympic athlete, I could (maybe) see where all the fuss might pay off. But for Joe Blow Six-pack and me, it's not going to matter much. What we need is some serious cuts in consumption, not minor tweaks in sources. We need a canon, not a delicate scalpel.

And that's what I find irritating - a focus on nuances and details with barely a nod toward the big picture.

I don;t think that using a "big cannon" would be at all effective individually. In fact, I do believe that is a leading cause of yoyo-dieting.

Making minor tweaks here and there.....If you drink a six pack of sodas a day, replace three of those sodas with water or iced tea for a month. You are getting rid of a good 225 calories each day just doing that alone. Plus all of the sugar that goes with it. The following month, you get rid of soda altogether, and drink water or unsweetened iced tea. Within 2 months, you have jsut reduced your caloric intake by nearly 500 calories/day. Even if you replaced all of those 500 calories with something to eat.....say you are eating more broccoli and/or other vegetables....at the very least, you are replacing a **** ton of sugars with a **** ton of fiber. Suddenly, your body will be able to process those same number of calories more efficiently.

For the third month, you replace your portions of pasta with rice. You reduce your carbs, and are now eating something that will have a lasting effect on your hunger throughout the day, even if you are not still not significantly reducing your calories. By the end of this month, you will have less need to want to eat as much, since you are eating more efficient foods that stave off hunger a lot longer. Thereby, effectively reducing caloric intake in the long run. In the meantime, you are eating foods that are much more nutritious for your body, even if you are consuming the same number of calories.

When it comes to changing a diet, "small tweaks" are much easier for anyone to deal with, than large chunks. The name of the game isn;t to drastically change anything about your lifestyle. But to do it slowly, over a period of time with stated goals in mind. This, I think, is the heart of Taube's arguments: That you are treating the mentality of the individual. An obese person feels hungry, and therefore, compelled to eat. Let them eat. The number of calories are not as important as the quality of the foods when it comes to treating both the mind and the body. Replace one sugary substance with a fibrous substance each week. Replace one carb-heavy substance, again, with a fibrous substance every other week. Do this for a period of 90 days, and all those small tweaks will add up. Once that person has been weaned off bad foods, THEN you can begin to reduce the calories.....again, little-by-little. Maybe cut one portion of rice by half for a week. Maybe instead of eating an entire chicken breast with your rice and vegetable dinner, eat only half a chicken breast for that one meal each day. It isn't a lot less calories each week you are reducing. Just a few more each week.

Much easier to adapt to small, incremental changes, than to large ones. The main point of Taubes, is to show just which foods are better choices to make. Not to condemn people for consuming too much food. That's why he says the arguments against him are all strawman. He is not denying the laws of thermodyanmics in human dieting. At least, that is what I am taking from him as I read more about the guy.

 

[blutoski]

Taubes has said and clarified over and over again that calories in calories out doesn't tell you anything meaningful, not that we can't apply the laws of physics to the human body.

My main point is that he has said a lot of things over the years, many of them contradictory, and this has led to mass confusion and mistrust of the professionals. He originally literally said the laws of physics do not apply. I think he may have believed that at the time, and I suspect he does not really believe it anymore. Yes, he's been adjusting his message with qualifiers over the years, but that doesn't retroactively alter the content of the millions of books and articles that people have read and internalized.

At this point I don't understand how anyone can honestly misunderstand this so fundamentally.

I don't think we're misunderstanding. I think we're saying he's mostly missing the point. "not even wrong" as they say.

I don't understand your point or what the "strawman" is.

Most of his hypothesis seems to be about an alternate history - that's the strawperson. Specifically, he talks about the public shifting their eating habits to avoid fat. But the public didn't do this, so he's presenting a strawman about that. There are other examples.

Hall says that "some people’s bodies are more efficient at storing calories", she says that "Taubes is "correct" when he says, “Those who get fat do so because of the way their fat is regulated.”" If there are people who have bodies that deal with calories better than others, then she understands there are those who have bodies that really don't deal with calories efficiently at all. This means one person can consume the same or less calories doing the same exercise to another, but one can put on fat while the other may not. That person who puts on weight then ends up obese, despite eating the same thing as someone who's metabolism is efficient. Is the number of calories then really the most important measure?

It is, because while the above is true, it does not explain the obesity epidemic. We have had these physiological attributes for millions of years. Taubes does not discuss the existing science on this question in his books and articles, I assume because the results are not on message. I think early on he was asking good questions, but just unaware that many had already been answered. That's understandable because he started with no knowledge in the field, so was publishing books while maybe 70 years behind in question asking.

Now he's probably more aware of the gaps in his earlier knowledge and the opportunity was there to update his model to incorporate the science. But instead, his destiny appears to be to hire his own scientists and pump out custom research.

This doesn't impress me. These are the same people that said trans-fats were safe and should be used in place of animal fats, until they realised they were wrong about that and then the crusade was against trans fats.

I'm pretty sure they're not. But you can present links to where you read either Dr. Hall or CSPI saying so and I will change my mind.

It would surprise me - I'm unaware of any scientific organization that would have classified trans fats as 'safe'. At the moment, the position of the profession is that there is no safe level of consumption of trans fats, and locally here, they are disappointed that the Canadian government is not banning it from the food supply entirely. But that's about politics (food industry lobbying), not science.

And yeah, I am not surprised that an achieved, respected, objective skeptical scientist with expertise in the field and no agenda beyond finding the truth does not impress you. Please consider that that may be a bad thing.

They also seem overly hyperbolic condemning a vast number of things, and using exaggerated rhetoric like describing things as "hearts attack on plates". They are just the kind of people that cause the public to distrust every pronouncement about a certain food being bad for them.

I think you're confusing hyperbolic journalism with scientific research.
I would recommend just plain ignoring the former, which includes journalists like Taubes.

 

[blutoski]

I don;t think that using a "big cannon" would be at all effective individually. In fact, I do believe that is a leading cause of yoyo-dieting.

Making minor tweaks here and there.....If you drink a six pack of sodas a day, replace three of those sodas with water or iced tea for a month. You are getting rid of a good 225 calories each day just doing that alone. Plus all of the sugar that goes with it. The following month, you get rid of soda altogether, and drink water or unsweetened iced tea. Within 2 months, you have jsut reduced your caloric intake by nearly 500 calories/day. Even if you replaced all of those 500 calories with something to eat.....say you are eating more broccoli and/or other vegetables....at the very least, you are replacing a **** ton of sugars with a **** ton of fiber. Suddenly, your body will be able to process those same number of calories more efficiently.

For the third month, you replace your portions of pasta with rice. You reduce your carbs, and are now eating something that will have a lasting effect on your hunger throughout the day, even if you are not still not significantly reducing your calories. By the end of this month, you will have less need to want to eat as much, since you are eating more efficient foods that stave off hunger a lot longer. Thereby, effectively reducing caloric intake in the long run. In the meantime, you are eating foods that are much more nutritious for your body, even if you are consuming the same number of calories.

When it comes to changing a diet, "small tweaks" are much easier for anyone to deal with, than large chunks. The name of the game isn;t to drastically change anything about your lifestyle. But to do it slowly, over a period of time with stated goals in mind. This, I think, is the heart of Taube's arguments: That you are treating the mentality of the individual. An obese person feels hungry, and therefore, compelled to eat. Let them eat. The number of calories are not as important as the quality of the foods when it comes to treating both the mind and the body. Replace one sugary substance with a fibrous substance each week. Replace one carb-heavy substance, again, with a fibrous substance every other week. Do this for a period of 90 days, and all those small tweaks will add up. Once that person has been weaned off bad foods, THEN you can begin to reduce the calories.....again, little-by-little. Maybe cut one portion of rice by half for a week. Maybe instead of eating an entire chicken breast with your rice and vegetable dinner, eat only half a chicken breast for that one meal each day. It isn't a lot less calories each week you are reducing. Just a few more each week.

Much easier to adapt to small, incremental changes, than to large ones. The main point of Taubes, is to show just which foods are better choices to make. Not to condemn people for consuming too much food. That's why he says the arguments against him are all strawman. He is not denying the laws of thermodyanmics in human dieting. At least, that is what I am taking from him as I read more about the guy.

I would also recommend reading his books, not just things 'about' him. He has a following that don't necessarily portray his claims accurately. As I mentioned earlier, he has literally, literally said that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply on several occasions. Then other times he has said of course they do. That's the Jeane Dixon thing.

From what I can elicit from his publications, the heart of Taubes' arguments is that he believes the population has become less healthy because we have shifted our macronutrient ratios heavily in favour of carbohydrates.

But this is not only unproven... it actually borders on disproven at this point. The primary driver for obesity is the progress in the science of food marketing. We're not necessarily eating because we're 'hungry' - the model is that most of the calorie surplus is what's called 'mindless eating'. Eating when we're not hungry because of environment, habits. Taubes doesn't address this because he's been focusing his attention on the carbs thing. It's all he knows.

When all you have is a hammer, your interpretation of the world is that everything must be some sort of nail.

I find I have a parallel experience in nutrition that I have with religion. As an atheist, I am often aghast at how committed people are to their One True Religion. Diets are the same way. I try to work with the client's 'diet belief system', rather than challenge it. They won't be in a good situation for long term weight management until they downplay the diet and make significant changes to their environment and habits.

 

[blutoski]

Right. That's what I say.

Now, you did say that "calories in, calories out" (Marplots used the acrnym "CICO"), is "simple" rather than "easy." That's a much better word choice. And it is a simple concept. I am, however, going to play devil's advocate for a moment:

You can also say: "In order to win a baseball game, all you have to do is score more run than the other team."

The concept is simple. Or rather, CICO is overly simplified, in the same way as the above statement about winning a baseball game is oversimplified. Getting there is complex. There are many other variable than just the number of calories. You must treat the entire mind and body in order to have any hope of getting someone obese, to not be.

Sure, but that's not contradictory. The point is that there's a way to keep score, so the only strategies that make sense are those that have increasing your score in mind.

The contrast - and the reason it's topical - is that there are people saying one or more of the following:

• CICO is a falsehood. The analogy in baseball would be somebody saying you don't need to build a game strategy around hitting the most home runs.
• that all registered dieticians and their professional peers do is throw out the vague instruction to reduce calorie surplus, with no suggestions of how this would be achieved - this is just a strawperson.
• that because of the prior two points, CICO model has directly led to the obesity epidemic and therefore its advocates are to blame

 

[blutoski]

And yeah, I am not surprised that an achieved, respected, objective skeptical scientist with expertise in the field and no agenda beyond finding the truth does not impress you. Please consider that that may be a bad thing.

I also just located an old review by another person whose competence in this subject matter I regard as quite strong: Dr. Yoni Freedhoff.

[Book review: Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat]

 

[Hellbound]

[*] CICO is a falsehood. The analogy in baseball would be somebody saying you don't need to build a game strategy around hitting the most home runs.

Actually, it's more like people saying that the number of runs has nothing to do with winning. It's even more absurd than you've given it credit for.

 

[Edx]

My main point is that he has said a lot of things over the years, many of them contradictory, and this has led to mass confusion and mistrust of the professionals. He originally literally said the laws of physics do not apply.

I'm reading the book she quoted that from. It IS out of context. He spends a lot of time telling you how the laws of physics do matter, just not in the way that is claimed by his detractors. Its the same reason the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to evolution, just not in the way Creationists claim.

I think he may have believed that at the time, and I suspect he does not really believe it anymore. Yes, he's been adjusting his message with qualifiers over the years, but that doesn't retroactively alter the content of the millions of books and articles that people have read and internalized.

Yet I have yet to see where he has ever actually said what is attributed to him. Where people will say he believes the human body is not subject to the laws of physics, and that he believes the body is magic. He has said things like you can be as gluttonous as you want on fat, but that isn't the same thing as saying you can eat unlimited amounts of calories from fat. It means when you eat a high fat low carb diet you eat until you are full and your brain doesn't keep signaling that it's hungry and drive you to keep eating. He is saying the carbs are not satiating while fat is so satiating you won't be able to eat the amount necessary to put on weight with sufficient amounts of it (eggs are a lot more satiating than piece of cake). A lot of junk food is fat surrounded in sugar, and the foods high in sugar enable one to eat such a lot of fat at the same time. In a cake you'll find a lot of butter and eggs, and it is very easy for many people to eat the whole thing and keep craving it not so long after. If these people tried to eat that much butter and eggs they would have a real hard time of it, not to mention that their insulin levels wouldn't be spiking like crazy.

I don't think we're misunderstanding. I think we're saying he's mostly missing the point. "not even wrong" as they say.

As I said, I can't see where he has ever said what people like Hall say he says, and he has clarified many times in different ways since then if there was any doubt. Yet people like Hall keep acting like he is denying the laws of physics apply to the human body. I gave you an example of the cause of teenage growth being incorrectly identified as due to eating more. I'm not sure why you keep cutting that out. This is one of the example Taubes uses to explain what he means.

Most of his hypothesis seems to be about an alternate history - that's the strawperson. Specifically, he talks about the public shifting their eating habits to avoid fat. But the public didn't do this, so he's presenting a strawman about that. There are other examples.

He has said government guidelines shifted to recommend high carb/low fat diets because fat was being connected to heart disease and since they had cut the fats it had to be replaced by something. Is it any wonder that we have such problems with diabetes when we recommend a high carb diet when carbs spike blood sugar? People with diabetes have a higher chance of developing heart disease, yet the heart association put "approved" ticks on high carb products.

It is, because while the above is true, it does not explain the obesity epidemic. We have had these physiological attributes for millions of years.

If fat is more satiating than carbs, then a low fat, high carb diet will have a profound effect on appetite. I'm not sure why you think this is somehow unrelated or irrelevant. People on high fat low carb diets say they feel more fulfilled and are less hungry and have less cravings. If their weight loss really just purely down to them consuming less calories, then it still seems like a good idea to reduce carbs and increase fat.

Now he's probably more aware of the gaps in his earlier knowledge and the opportunity was there to update his model to incorporate the science. But instead, his destiny appears to be to hire his own scientists and pump out custom research.

As far as I am aware he is undertaking his own research precisely because he thinks they haven't been done right.

I'm pretty sure they're not. But you can present links to where you read either Dr. Hall or CSPI saying so and I will change my mind.

It would surprise me - I'm unaware of any scientific organization that would have classified trans fats as 'safe'.

CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson said "Twenty years ago, scientists (including me) thought trans [fat] was innocuous. Since then, we've learned otherwise."

This is the infamous article where they said that transfats were safe.

At the moment, the position of the profession is that there is no safe level of consumption of trans fats, and locally here, they are disappointed that the Canadian government is not banning it from the food supply entirely. But that's about politics (food industry lobbying), not science.

But originally they did say it was safe, their original issue was animals fats and they said transfats should replace it in restaurants.

I think you're confusing hyperbolic journalism with scientific research.
I would recommend just plain ignoring the former, which includes journalists like Taubes.

In what world is calling food dishes "heart attacks on a plate" not hyperbole? It also turned out to be wrong, and certainly was very over the top.


EDIT:

I also just located an old review by another person whose competence in this subject matter I regard as quite strong: Dr. Yoni Freedhoff.

[Book review: Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat]

He mischaracterises what Taubes is saying as well. It all seems like there is a conscious effort to misunderstand him. I'm not sure why so many people can read the same thing and come to the conclusion that he believes thermodynamics is not relevant to the human body when you read what he says in context. He has spent a great deal of time going over the topic, yet we just see a few sentences quoted out of context and is represented this way.

Nevertheless he still says he "agrees with the premise":
1.That we eat too many carbs.
2. That carbohydrates, more specifically the refined highly processed ones, contribute dramatically to obesity and disease.
3. That "a myopic" view of dietary fat causing chronic disease and obesity has contributed dramatically to the rise in the societal prevalence of chronic disease and obesity because of the shift to carbohydrates.
4. That saturated fat has been wrongly demonised by the medical establishment for decades.

You have argued against many of these points right here in this thread, but here you say he is competent, why? Because he writes a negative review of Taubes' book? Is that the only thing that matters? It does seem you miss the forest for the trees, just as "calories in calories out" and "a calorie is a calorie" also misses it.

 

[jimbob]

I also just located an old review by another person whose competence in this subject matter I regard as quite strong: Dr. Yoni Freedhoff.

[Book review: Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat]

Nice review