I’ll simply quote Bray from his review of Taube’s book and then ask you the following question: How come Taubes, in his ‘5 years of research’ wasn’t able to realize that the self-reported food data in 1980 was wrong?

It’s 2009 and we know factually that the obese eat more than the lean. Yet somehow Taubes was unable to come across that data point. And refuses to acknowledge it even now. What does that tell you about him and his agenda?

This quote comes from the following paper.

Bray, GA. Good Calories by Gary Taubes. Obesity Reviews (2008) 9:251-263.

Bray says:
“In developing his ideas about calories and obesity in Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes argues that obese individuals do not eat more than lean ones do. The data for his belief come from the Diet and Health Report (16) prepared by the National Academy of Sciences. This report said ‘Most studies comparing normal and overweight people suggest that those who are overweight eat fewer calories than those of normal weight’.calories more per day. To maintain this extra weight the women have to eat enough food to provide this extra energy.

We now know that the data used in the Diet and Health Report were wrong and that obese people eat more food energy than do lean ones. The data showed that normal-weight people underreport what they eat by 10–30%. This means that dietary food-intake records underestimate energy expendi- ture by nearly a quarter. For overweight people, the degree of underreporting is higher, varying from 30% to 50%.”

Bottom line, it’s still calories in vs. calories out.

I have yet to see any research in any way bolstering the original claim from the 40’s and 50’s claiming total dietary fat was to blame for obesity and heart disease.

When it came clear that total fat wasn’t the answer, they started zeroing in on dietary saturated fat – again, without ANY research to back it up. The only citation i have seen from the era showed the results of feeding lab rats artificially saturated fats (and vegetable fats, irony of ironies) .. and this has been the only literature anyone has ever come up with, from that era, justifying the hysteria. Bad science!! The only tangible result of this fat phobia – several decades putting Americans on trans-fat laden margerine and oils – has had huge, sweeping ill effects upon the population at large (pun intended).

The general population grew obese, and in a way that outpaced dramatically the reduction in exercise. Reviews showing the lessening of exercise for people do NOT mirror the rise in obesity and disease. No-one disputes exercise being good for you, and everyone agrees it is a part of healthy living. But it is demonstrably NOT the main causative factor in the meteoric rise of morbidity that hit the people of North America with exponential growth …

However, if you chart the growth (proportionately) of the increase in processed carbs and altered vegatable oils over time, you WILL see exactly the same trend as seen for the increased obesity and illness.

Taubes was one of the more lucid earlier skeptics on this topic, and I have enjoyed his writings immensely. I myself am only in the infant stages of researching this topic, and it is a daunting task. The sheer hype and emotion that abounds on all sides is suffocating! One of the things I liked about Taubes is the style of his writing, it’s calm … one does tend to cringe when criticism say it’s “mostly crap” and “cherry picked” and “half-truths” … I dare say there will be lucid rebuttals of some of his theories, and they are very welcome as part of the debate. I have yet to see any OTHER work that contains as balanced a bibliography as his GCBC book, it includes the works he dislikes as well as the works he favors.

To those who react viscerally and call him “crap” I will say this .. I’m fairly sure you are reacting to one, small aspect of what he spoke of, namely the “exercise won’t make you slim”. It is perhaps one of the more controversial theses in his book. And it does indeed seem like you don’t understand at all what he is saying. It does take a calm bias-free read to ‘get it’. I recommend you take the time, it is well worth it.

He recommends moderate exercise for health, throughout the book. At no time does he say “don’t exercise at all”.

What he says is, from a scientific point of view, a review of all studies and work to date very strongly points to “diet and exercise” (i.e. calorie in / calorie out, a calorie is a calorie no matter what) fails. If you review all the attempts and documentations overall, and are an unbiased scientists, you will conclude the same (remember, conclusion has to be based on OUTCOME, on actual results ..not what your heart wishes it to be). He postulates several reasons for all this poor outcome for exercise in dieting, including rebound-hunger as well as poor nutritional support .. as well as poor long-term compliance. Whatever the reason, it fails the vast majority of the time. Critics of Taubes return to the phrase “well, the obese are lazy and they lie about their intake”, something that fails to resolve the situation or further the debate. Taubes refused to endorse the widespread believe that “suddenly 25-50% of Americans are fat, lazy liars” (does this imply that up until the 70’s, mostly everyone was NOT lazy and without motivation?). He proposed real theories on the actual CAUSE of the problem. And he has proposed true and population-wide remedies, even if implementing them will be a tremendous challenge.

There are not many researchers, in the last 5-10 years, who disagree that the traditional ‘calorie in / calorie out’ model has failed. Just that Taubes got there much earlier

He puts forth some theories to explain why, and he for sure doesn’t cover all of the bases. He misses out by and large on the emergence of huge injections of dietary artificial fructose into our daily diets. However, his book has been an eye opener for me and many others. I look forward to anything he writes in the future as a welcome addition to the debate.

Bet he doesn’t include the word “crap”in there anywhere, either

Fantastic website and i very much appreciate the rigour in your approach.

As a medical student i have exposed to dubious dietary dictates on the course which have no substantion in the literature – at least as far as i can tell!

I was very much hoping on tips on how to search pubmed when performing a review of the field – unfortunately my body packed around the time we did literature reviews a few years back

An idea of the framework you utilise for literature searches and some examples of the search terms you may use if you were to perform a search for the metabolic effects of insulin and relevance to much propounded idea that insulin levels are a major determinant of adiposity.

pleeeeeeeeeeeeease

I switched to a low fat, moderate carb diet with cardio, and it’s been night and day. I can see the fat coming off, recovery is less of an issue as well. The carb cravings went away entirely; I guess my body was trying to tell me something. I didn’t understand why until I read this. Great stuff.

Too often people say only one way works, but people don’t realize everyone’s body is different. People just need to stick to what works for them, and the industry needs to propose options, as you are doing, rather than pushing all these fads and singular ideas.

I would love not only to be lean but also to look very young and healthy and have a lot of energy taboot.

but how can I tell if I handle carbs well or not.

Oh yeah, and as far as I know Poliquin was saying this because it’s the fastest way to burn off fat while keeping muscle.

Best,

Frank

He starts with an incorrect/out of date 1980 paper (suggesting that the obese eat the same as the lean) and then goes looking for reasons why this is the case, concluding that it’s insulin.

He then carefully ignores all data that doesn’t agree with him including an enormous amount of data showing that the obese under-report their true food intake (which is why the 1980 survey is garbage

For someone who ’spent 5 years raiding the research’, he mainly just selected data that agreed with his pre-formed conclusion, ignoring a tremendous amount of current research that did not.

And that a lot of people keep insisting on a metabolic advantage that NO study has ever been able to measure doesn’t change the fact that NO study has ever been able to measure it. I’d point you to the study by Brehm for example:

“The role of energy expenditure in the differential weight loss in obese women on low-fat and low-carbohydrate diets. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2005 Mar;90(3):1475-82.”

Which directly measured both resting energy expenditure and thermic effect of food after a low- and high-carb meal. Results? No difference in resting energy expenditure and a higher TEF after the carb-based test meal. If the metabolic advantage exists, it should be measurable with current technology. And no study has been able to find it EVER (it’s always inferred by changes in weight).

And bodybuilders have gotten to sub 10% for a couple of decades with carb-based diets so what Poliquin says doesn’t seem to be that relevant here.

Which isn’t to say that lowcarb diets don’t work for a lot of people. But they work because people eat less, not because of any metabolic magic.

Understand? I’m not anti-lowcarb diets (my first book is about nothing but them), but I am against people preaching magic voodoo that doesn’t exist.

Lyle