Read the whole book. And check out my post #503.
Take in the whole picture: Taubes argues, reasonably, that human beings are not some special order of animal that works in a way completely different from other animals, and other animals have fat regulation systems that work perfectly to keep them as fat or thin as they need to be, whether they have abundant food or not. So assuming, as the calories in/out theory does, that we only get fat because we have so much food we can’t help but overeat and then we get fat doesn’t actually make much sense.
My biggest problem with Taubes is actually the fact that he seems to completely ignore emotional eating, which I think can play a role, because I think I am an example.
I think there are basically two categories: people who are predisposed to gain weight because of their genetically vulnerable fat regulation system who “break” it via emotional eating of massive carbs, which quickly spirals in on itself, making a goddamn mess of things. That would be me. I was a very slim child who was indifferent to food until my parents split when I was six. (Both my parents had a predisposition to gain weight.) 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. Then I was fat on top of messed up about my parents, and trying to navigate school. (I was also ridiculously tall; I was 5’7" at age 10. I was also very intelligent with a freakish vocabulary and the same willingness to go against the tide I am famous for here. 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, and stick a fork in me, cuz I am done.)
(Fun tidbit:in 7th grade I started a new school and quickly identified the most popular girls, whom I of course longed to have as my friends. Fast forward to high school, and in fact we did become the closest of friends, and remain so to this very day, 40 years later. And the little 12 year old inside me sometimes goes “wow! Jane and Carrie are your best friends??? REALLY?” - all to say my social life did improve over time.)
Then there’s the other category. These people also have vulnerable fat metabolisms. But they didn’t screw them up by turning to food for emotional comfort, they screwed them up by following a modern diet bursting with simple sugars and carbs…then, when they gained, they went on low-fat, low-cal diets packed with carbs. They starved and got even hungrier and more screwed up. Then they got fatter when they stopped starving themselves. Then they started having to cope with shame and frustration because of their weight, making them even more messed up around food, which, like me, they find themselves craving intensely.And while we got their by different routes, we end at the same place.
When I was a girl, I was one of just a handful of fat kids. I assume all of us were emotional eaters or came from a family of emotional eaters that stuffed us early and often with boatloads of carbs, tripping our vulnerable fat systems.
These days, lots and lots of kids are fat. They are born fat. They are category two, along with all the adults who are obese these days that were not when I was young. (And when I was young, by the way, the conventional wisdom of how to diet was to cut out starch! And it worked, so we didn’t see the degree of super-obesity we do today, it was extremely rare, nearly unknown. Back then, you gained a little, you cut starch, you put your system back on track, you move forward. Today, you gain a little, you diet with carbs and you fuck your system up more, get fatter, fuck it up more, get fatter, fuck it up more…until, when you’re 50, you weigh 300 pounds and you have diabetes.)
So in the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter whether Taubes makes the distinction, because the result is the same.