# I unhappily report that I am right about obesity and diet (Very long) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 16, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543 "2011-02-16T04:25:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 32
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/621 "2011-03-12T20:20:02Z")
When I was following a low-to-moderate carb diet, it was quite varied and didn’t incorporate a lot of bacon or T-bone steaks, either. I remember that a crustless spinach quiche was one of my favorite dishes; I also ate a lot of roasted vegetables. Sure, there was a lot of meat in my diet too, but this: > [@](#): > > Platter of bacon for breakfast with a couple of eggs and cheese, cheeseburger for lunch, macadamias for snack, cream in your coffee, big T-bone with plenty of fat for dinner, some veges with butter… no sweat. Would have made me feel sick. Although hey, if it works for someone else, more power to them. But yeah, not all low-carb diets look like that. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/622 "2011-03-12T23:34:23Z")
I’m getting more into “lettuce as bread” - I find it working better using big Romaine leaves. I used them as knockwurst “buns”, very effective, and last night I used them as taco shells! To get just a little of that tortilla/taco shell flavor I toasted one taco shell (15 grams carb) and crumbled it into the meat/onion/cheese, then spooned it into Romaine leaves. Perfect. I’m also finding my desire for sweet is diminishing, even for fruit - though not gone entirely. The breath issue is buggin’ bigtime, though. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/623 "2011-03-13T01:23:06Z")
Stoid, I have a recipe for tortillas made out of coconut flour. I used them as a base for huevos rancheros and they were pretty good. Let me know if you’re interested. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/624 "2011-03-13T01:44:23Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Platter of bacon for breakfast with a couple of eggs and cheese, cheeseburger for lunch, macadamias for snack, cream in your coffee, big T-bone with plenty of fat for dinner, some veges with butter… no sweat. And I hear of eating like that all the time on low-carb. > > _I_ certainly couldn’t do it..yikes… but it’s easy to imagine some people doing it. This is exactly how I eat (plus plenty of potatoes saturated in fat, minus macadamias, can’t afford them - upper budget for food is $250 per month, mostly for me and some for my BF, which doesn’t seem too high to me but I would certainly save a ton buying bulk dry vegetarian foods) and it’s effing delicious. I’ve always craved fat to an extreme though - loved to eat plain butter even as a baby and still do. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/625 "2011-03-13T05:25:07Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#): > > Stoid, I have a recipe for tortillas made out of coconut flour. I used them as a base for huevos rancheros and they were pretty good. Let me know if you’re interested. I’m interested in anything that works, although I confess it’s hard to imagine coconut flour NOT tasting like coconut, and coconut huevos rancheros?? That’s what carbs bring more than anything: a blank canvas, so to speak, that can marry with anything. Rice, flour, potatoes, bread… can go anywhere! I realized that one of my favorite dishes in the world is wonderfully low carb: chiles rellenos! What do you use to replace “dusting” flour for something like that? hard to get the egg to stick.. I would think there would be some kind of dry, fiber-y thing. Dried shirataki?? ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/626 "2011-03-13T11:55:02Z")
Almond flour. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/627 "2011-03-13T22:14:59Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#): > > Almond flour. Where are you finding all these exotic flours? And so, does coconut flour taste like coconut? ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/628 "2011-03-13T22:20:40Z")
I’ve seen almond flour in the “hippie” section of the grocery store. (You know, where they have the organic canned soups and the vegan frozen meals and the soy flour and so forth.) Coconut flour I have not seen, however. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/629 "2011-03-14T00:54:53Z")
> [@Gestalt](#): > > From what I understand the only difference between ketosis and ketoacidosis is degree of difference, and the wikipedia article says you can go into ketosis from a ketogenic diet. > > Where are you getting that insulin resistance/deficiency is the only way you can go into ketoacidosis? And if that’s the case, why would your blood acid levels go high with low endogenous insulin from diabetes but not from diet? From a very basic understanding of what it is. Oh, and it’s in the second paragraph of the Wikipedia article on ketoacidosis, under pathophysiology :rolleyes: Did you read it? I’m assuming not. The difference between a fire in your fireplace and a house fire is a degree of difference. The reason you don’t get runaway ketone body production if you have functioning insulin production and receptivity is because insulin regulates the switch between glycolysis and ketosis. If you can’t produce insulin, or have impaired sensitivity to the point where glucose transport can’t take place, then no feedback occurs to halt the production of ketone bodies. In most type-1 diabetics, insulin production is insufficient to balance the pathways without insulin injections, though even in type-1 diabetics a low-carb diet can [help with regulation]([http://www.dsolve.com/component/option,com\_docman/task,doc\_download/gid,24/](http://www.dsolve.com/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,24/), [http://www.dsolve.com/news-aamp-info-othermenu-60/23-diabetes-solution/163-lowcarbtrial](http://www.dsolve.com/news-aamp-info-othermenu-60/23-diabetes-solution/163-lowcarbtrial)) (PDF), so that they have fewer blood glucose fluctuations. In type-2 diabetics, a [ketogenic diet](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/2/348.short) has been shown to reduce reliance on exogenous insulin—to the point where some patients can discontinue the use of all anti-diabetic medication. Before insulin medication was devised, dietary intervention was basically the only treatment for diabetes, and while diabetics didn’t exactly have a long life expectancy, they did manage to survive for a while with nothing more than eating the right way. A diet that allows type-2 diabetics to go off medication indefinitely and greatly reduces the need for medication with type-1 diabetics sounds pretty darn effective to me. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/630 "2011-03-14T15:06:20Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Where are you finding all these exotic flours? And so, does coconut flour taste like coconut? Whole Foods. Amazon also sells them, and I think they’re even available on Prime. Coconut flour is a bit sweet, but it doesn’t taste like straight-up coconut. You need a LOT of eggs to make it into anything, though. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/631 "2011-03-14T15:12:43Z")
[Here](http://www.amazon.com/Bobs-Red-Mill-16-Ounce-Packages/dp/B000EDG598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300115229&sr=8-1) is my favorite brand of almond flour, at a good price (these bags go for $13 per at Whole Foods). Problem is that you get four of them, and I’m not sure if they’ll last long enough to make that worth it. [And here’s coconut flour.](http://www.amazon.com/Tropical-Traditions-Organic-Gluten-Coconut/dp/B000VZR1ZG/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1300115417&sr=1-1) They make awesome pancakes. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/632 "2011-03-14T21:54:14Z")
Okay, without derailing this thread into something even longer, I’d like to say that I just read (about half) of the book. And I haven’t changed my opinion about it - the author is cherrypicking science and ignoring what he doesn’t agree with. I don’t want to get too into it, because, as I say, I’m not actually interested in rehashing this whole thread or re-arguing about theories (I’m pretty sure we’ve all said our piece. But I wanted to provide a link to this [review](http://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/01/book-review-gary-taubes-why-we-get-fat.html)(written by a medical doctor), which pretty much sums up what I thought of it. Granted, I lost patience with the thing and didn’t finish it, but there you go. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/633 "2011-03-15T00:05:23Z")
I’m not going to ARGUE about it, but I’m wondering why you think the science is cherrypicked? BEcause you have direct knowledge of other, different facts and data, or because…? ---
**Author:** ![ladyfoxfyre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@ladyfoxfyre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ladyfoxfyre)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/634 "2011-03-15T01:15:08Z")
> [@Meyer6](#): > > Okay, without derailing this thread into something even longer, I’d like to say that I just read (about half) of the book. And I haven’t changed my opinion about it - the author is cherrypicking science and ignoring what he doesn’t agree with. I don’t want to get too into it, because, as I say, I’m not actually interested in rehashing this whole thread or re-arguing about theories (I’m pretty sure we’ve all said our piece. But I wanted to provide a link to this [review](http://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/01/book-review-gary-taubes-why-we-get-fat.html)(written by a medical doctor), which pretty much sums up what I thought of it. Granted, I lost patience with the thing and didn’t finish it, but there you go. That’s a great review, and almost exactly how I feel after reading it myself. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/635 "2011-03-15T05:50:56Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > I’m not going to ARGUE about it, but I’m wondering why you think the science is cherrypicked? BEcause you have direct knowledge of other, different facts and data, or because…? Partially because I read a lot of scientific writing and this just pinged my bullshit meter - it seems extremely unlikely that such a complex issue would have such a neat and tidy solution. Partially because his base assumptions seem off to me. For example, several times he alludes to the idea that overweight people are trying their absolute hardest and following all the conventional diet wisdom in an effort to lose weight, but they don’t lose, so therefore something must be wrong with the standard weight-loss advice. He presents this as absolutely logical - but many overweight people \*do \*overeat - convenience food, fast food, vending machine food, etc. And many people follow diet advice for a while but fall off the wagon when life becomes busy and stressful. I’m not saying that all overweight people are stuffing their face all the time, far from it, but some amount of overeating is hardly unheard of. Partially because I got curious about this guy and when I looked up his name I found stuff like this: > [@](#): > > [_Barbara_] Rolls [_professor of nutrition_] says she sent a big pile of her material on satiety to Taubes, but he “just brushed it aside.” She says he also interviewed her for over six hours, but every last sentence disappeared into a black hole. Likewise for the interviews Taubes conducted with James Hill and at least five other top obesity researchers from whom he apparently couldn’t extract even a single useful line: Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York; Marion Nestle, chairwoman of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University; Dr. Arne Astrup of Denmark; and Dr. Jules Hirsch, whom Taubes interviewed in his office at Rockefeller University in New York. “I just kept telling him, it doesn’t matter what kind of calories you eat,” says Hirsch. > [@](#): > > I thought [Taubes’] article was outrageous," [_Gerald_] Reaven [_endocrinologist_] says. “I saw my name in it and all that was quoted to me was not wrong. But in the context it looked like I was buying the rest of that crap.” He adds, “I tried to be helpful and a good citizen, and I ended up being embarrassed as hell. He sort of set me up.” When I first contacted Reaven, he was so angry he wouldn’t even let me interview him. Now admittedly, those quotes refer to earlier papers Taubes wrote on the same subject, not to this specific book, but they’re pretty damning in regards to his journalistic integrity. \*Both these quotes came from [this](http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/big-fat-fake)site. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/636 "2011-03-15T15:43:45Z")
> [@Meyer6](#): > > …so therefore something must be wrong with the standard weight-loss advice. There \*\*_IS_ \*\*something wrong with the “standard weight loss advice”. The standard low-fat low calorie diet simply does not work for most. Low carb works for many. (The Mediterranean diet also works for many). Here’s part of my earlier post Low-carb works & appears safe. It’s right there in the fucking NEJM: [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0708681](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0708681) Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate diets may be effective alternatives to low-fat diets. The more favorable effects on lipids (with the low-carbohydrate diet) and on glycemic control (with the Mediterranean diet) suggest that personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions. and [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...2a.html?free=2](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...2a.html?free=2) Samaha and Foster each randomly assigned obese volunteers to either an Atkins-style low-carbohydrate or a traditional low-fat diet. In Samaha’s six-month study, subjects on the low-carb diets lost the most weight — an average of about 6 kilograms, roughly three times the weight loss reported for the low-fat group. Foster’s smaller, year-long trial initially showed similar results, but the difference between the two groups had disappeared by the end of the year. These two studies provide the best evidence so far that low-carbohydrate diets may be of some use for patients who need to shed weight — at least in the early stages of their treatment. “We have moved it from quackery to science,” says Foster. "Maybe there is something there, with the emphasis on the ‘maybe’. The trials also failed to find signs that cutting carbohydrates rather than fats will increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. If anything, levels of artery-clogging triglycerides, and of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ cholesterol, were slightly better among the volunteers on the low-carb diets." … Ideally, five years down the road, with lots of scientific data behind us, we would be in a position to recommend diets tailored to individuals such as, say, diabetics, meat lovers, or those with difficulty sticking to a low-fat diet," says Foster. “This whole idea of one diet wins, one diet loses, seems to say that every overweight person is the same behaviourally and metabolically, and that is just silly.” Peer reviewed scientific journals. Do note that they agree with me in that fiber, esp from leafy greens needs to be included. But that adds little calories. And I’ll note that these articles validate Stoid’s points- to an extent = \*\*“personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions…This whole idea of one diet wins, one diet loses, seems to say that every overweight person is the same behaviourally and metabolically, and that is just silly.” \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/637 "2011-03-15T16:45:15Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > In other words: we do not get fat because we eat too much, we eat too much because we’re fat. And aliens visited Earth a few decades ago, sweeping a deadly Fattifying Beam over the U.S., so that more and more of our population suddenly changed, so that our obesity rates suddenly started increasing! [quote=“Stoid, post:510, topic:571543”] I was a very slim child who was indifferent to food until my parents split when I was six [and] I discovered how soothing white toast with butter and pools of cinnamon sugar could be. This emotionally-driven overload of super simple carbohydrates messed up my fat metabolism, making me crave more on a biological level as well as an emotional one. So I ate more, craved it more, at more, craved it more. […] Suffice it to say my youth was challenging, and I found comfort in food. Oh, and pile on to that almost no impulse control at all, due to ADD,[/SIZE] Do you ever take personal responsibility for _anything_? Or is your entire life just a whirlwind of circumstances that force you to do things that you have no choice about? > [@Stoid](#): > > Makes me wonder all of a sudden… what does the slang term “fathead” mean? Is that big ego? My WAG is that it’s someone who has a head full of fat instead of neurons. As you may or may not be aware, fat cells do not transmit signals the way neurons do, so this is intended not to be taken literally. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/638 "2011-03-15T16:49:09Z")
This is completely OT, but that broken [/SIZE] tag cracked me right up. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/639 "2011-03-15T18:11:27Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Do you ever take personal responsibility for _anything_? Or is your entire life just a whirlwind of circumstances that force you to do things that you have no choice about? I take responsibility for _everything_ that happens in my own life, actually. But I don’t think that you and I would define it quite the same way. And I answered your question honestly, but don’t take that to mean that I’ve opened a dialog inviting examination of the topic, because I haven’t: both your point of view and your purpose are plain and neither support the possibility the you are remotely interested in an honest discussion on the nature of responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543/640 "2011-03-15T18:46:06Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There \*\*_IS_ \*\*something wrong with the “standard weight loss advice”. The standard low-fat low calorie diet simply does not work for most. Low carb works for many. (The Mediterranean diet also works for many). > > Here’s part of my earlier post > Low-carb works & appears safe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single study showing anything _ **other** _ than: [ul] [li]It works.[/li][li]It works to improve all the common factors associated with heart disease.[/li][li]It is safe.[/li][li]It tends to work _ **better** _ than other diets.[/li][/ul] I cannot recall here or anywhere else that I’ve seen people speak against it that studies have been offered to back up the hostility towards it. My recollection is that everything pretty much comes down to a general “fat and calories are bad, therefore a low-carb diet _must_ be bad.” All the science we have available (including some interesting stuff I just posted in the Cafe thread on low-carb about a ketogenic diet being a treatment for epilepsy, which includes research demonstrating the overall benefit to the brain, particularly damaged brains, of a low-carb diet, and how researchers are looking at it as having potential for other brain issues like Parkinson’s and Alzheimers. There’s also interesting research regarding sugar and the brain in type II diabetics, showing that too much impairs brain function. And by sugar, I mean blood sugar…the thing that rises when you eat carbs.) must lead us to conclude that whether or not every aspect of Taubes’ thesis is correct or not, one thing is true: carbohydrate restriction diets, from the mild to the severe,\*\*\* are entirely legitimate, effective, safe, and healthy. \*\*\* In other words, despite everything we’ve been hearing all our lives, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with bacon and eggs for breakfast, pork rinds for a snack, a plate of ground beef for lunch, and Italian sausages for dinner. Especially if you eat these things in reponse to your appetite, and eat them in combination with high-fiber, low-carb vegetables. Therefore, to demean, mock, and dismiss eating this way is to go against the ethos of this site: it is _ignorant_. Since so many people around here seem to assess these issues primarily on their gut reactions, here’s mine: I think Taubes’ theories are fundamentally correct, but that they really apply to obesity, rather than every person who ever gained 10 or 20 pounds. (As I’ve alluded to multiple times thorugh these threads). I think his theories very effectively explain not only why so many people are fat, but more importantly, why so many people are _so extremely fat_. IN the same way others find it so hard to believe that we’ve had a sudden genetic shift that explains the obesity explosion, I find it hard to believe that we’ve had a sudden _behavioral_ shift that magically turned huge numbers of Americans into gluttons - at least, not without some underlying biological explanation, such as Taubes’ provides. ( Not to mention the experience I have had, which is that my genuine gluttony and my extreme obesity have not existed simultaneously, and if one explained the other, that would not be true. ) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543.md?page=31) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-unhappily-report-that-i-am-right-about-obesity-and-diet-very-long/571543.md?page=33)