No,
Blutoski's referred to studies, which are available for a quick googling
He has not given an explanation for how we can hold the view that fat, low GI foods, or high fiber foods are more satiating than refined carbs like sugar, but that someone's appetite and cravings will have no effect on someone's ability to stick to a diet. We already know appetite suppressing drugs can cause weight loss because people eat less. The most dramatic weight loss treatment is physically reducing someones appetite with surgery by restricting or cutting away their stomach. For certain it is harder to stick to a diet if you are surrounded by people eating badly, but in the same way it is hard to quit taking heroin if you are surrounded by heroin addicts in your personal life. It is still asinine to suggest that it is just as difficult for someone to stop taking those drugs if you have significantly reduced their cravings for it. We perform surgeries like gastric bypass precisely on the logic that this will dramatically increase their satiety with very little food, if someones appetite and ability to feel satiated had no effect, why on earth would we be performing such invasive risky surgeries?
I talked about studies he referred to. They did not study the behavior of obese people. He told me only 30% of those studied were technically obese and only 30% technically overweight. Like I said this is like studying whether smoking is addictive and only 30% of your study participants are smoking every day and where 40% aren't smokers at all. You're going to get an answer that smoking is vastly less addictive than it is because those non-smokers that choke and get sick when they have a cigarette will water down the results. Seriously if you gave someone cigarettes that have never had it before and checked their response you'd probably conclude that it was the opposite of addictive. Taubes says the obese have an metabolic hormonal disorder which causes their body to be inefficient at storing fat, while also increasing their appetite which feeds the problem more. Even if you don't agree or even if that is wrong, the fact remains that those who are addicted to smoking or other drugs are psychologically and psychically different from those who are not, likewise we know obese people are different psychologically and psychically than the lean population the only question is in what sense. If they had 100% heavily obese patients in the study, would the results have been the same or different? We don't know since that study doesn't seem to have been done, and even if it had been that doesn't necessarily mean we can make as wide reaching conclusions with the results that Blutoski is.
Another Taubes quote from
this link:
Again - that's just silly.
As Blutoski said - his ideas seem very cultish.
You arent saying why it is silly so I assume you think it is silly for the same reason those quoting him say it is. These people take him out of context and make him out to be saying things he isn't. You are just taking their word for it that he meant what they say he meant. I am reading the book they pulled these quotes from right now and so I know they are misrepresenting him, and I have recently watched various presentations he has given. It boggles my mind how any intelligent person can read or watch what he has to say and somehow honestly interpret him this way.
Taubes never said that calories do not matter at all or that the laws of physics do not apply. We have already been over this. What Taubes is saying is the idea that you took in more calories than your expended tells you next to nothing about why someone got fat. If you wanted to know why Bill Gates is rich saying he earned more money than he spent would get you laughed out of the room. Of course he earned more than he spent but that is essentially meaningless. If you wanted to know why a room is crowded and someone told you more people entered than left, this again is technically correct, but tells you nothing about why the room is crowed. Maybe a famous person showed up for an event, maybe there was a party, maybe there was free food and drink, maybe there were bouncers on the doors pulling people inside.
Taubes says that you can be "gluttonous" on fat on a very low carb diet and this is represented as him saying you can keep consuming as many calories as possible and it won't affect your weight. What he actually was referring to is the satiating ability of a high fat low carb diet and that you will be able to eat as much as you
feel like and that you will naturally stop when you are full without that sense of deprivation you typically have on low fat diets. Even if it turned out that high fat low carb diets were just as satiating as high carb low fat diets, it is still false to represent what he said this way.
If Taubes is wrong then fine, but at least criticise what he is actually saying and not such basic misrepresentations, otherwise it does make it seem like you feel you have to. The word strawmen is so overused I get tired of seeing the word, but that is what we are talking about here.
