Well, no, I’m no authority which I said and I was merely asking about the protein thing. I am aware it’s an oversimplification to say that Taubes was just saying carbs=insulin=fat. I’ve also seen some other authors discuss other mechanisms in the body to store fat besides high insulin + high glucose levels, so even that is apparently not the whole story.
However, some of the objections I’ve seen/raised seem to be blatant misrepresentations of studies. It’s my understanding that ladyfoxfyre is a pharmacist so I have a feeling her knowledge of biochemistry is fairly sound. If you want to counter any of her or others specific criticisms, it might be helpful.
Anyways, nutrition is complicated. I’m sure glad I can just eat whatever I want and never gain a pound. Kidding!
This is exactly my beef with him. He posits a theory, say, that “it can clearly be demonstrated that caloric consumption is irrelevant when evaluating diets for efficacy in weight loss. In fact, this study right here shows that people who lowered their caloric consumption by 300 calories a day only lost a total of a measly 1.4 pounds over seven years.” He links to a study, and if you didn’t click on the study itself and actually read it through, you might take him at his word. Most people seem to do just that, and they so “oh my, Taubes is very well researched!” Well yeah, at first glance it looks like he researched a lot of things related to what he’s talking about. But when you go back to read the linked article, it turns out that the study was not looking at weight loss. It didn’t even have groups control for calorie intake. The groups in the study all took in roughly the same number of calories daily, because that’s not what the study was trying to demonstrate. The goal of the study was to determine if post-menopausal women changed the percentage of their calories from fat, whether that caused an increase in weight over a 7 year period. So the goal of the study was clearly not to decrease calorie consumption and determine if that affected weight loss. It was to adjust the percentage of calories from fat and determine if it caused weight gain.
However, that is not how Taubes makes it look from his article. He says, “this study shows that decreasing calories does not result in long-term weight loss”. This is a very disingenuous interpretation of the research, and if you actually read the conclusions of the research paper itself, it says something explicitly to that effect, such as “this study does not demonstrate the weight loss results of modified calorie intake diet” or some such.
I agree with the science behind hormonal impacts to weight gain and loss, I am a fan of the low-carb lifestyle. But Taubes argues that calories do not matter whatsoever, and he is patently false about that. In research he quotes in his own book to demonstrate that calories don’t matter, he cites a study of extreme calorie restriction of about 600 kcal/day, in which the test subjects lost massive amounts of weight, and ultimately concludes…that it doesn’t matter anyway that it worked, because 600 kcal/day is not a pragmatic diet to be on. Well no shit. But it does demonstrate that calorie restriction is effective, which was the point he was arguing against.
I must admit that while I study biology, my area is genetics, and so biochemistry is not really my strong suit and I’m not going to argue about his hormonal theories. It’s the fact that he misrepresents so much research that is particularly damning, I think. He also completely fails to look at reasonable calorie-restriction diets (1500-2000 calories a day), and continually points out that traditional diets are well known for failing while never producing any evidence that low-carb diets have better long-term success rates.
In the monster thread Stoid criticized the Ancel Keys seven countries study (I think she got this from Taubes too), while pointing to the Minnesota starvation study in order to ‘prove’ that dieting made people miserable and obsessed with food. She (and Taubes) fail to acknowledge that Keys used many experimental techniques that would now be considered questionable - the starvation experiment was performed using conscientious objectors, who were motivated by avoiding the war and were not overweight to start with, and reduced their food intake to the point that they lost 25% of their body mass. And we’re supposed to think that mental issues resulting from that kind of extreme deprivation are comparable to the effects of putting an overweight person, who is motivated by weight loss, on a reasonable diet? Right.
But Meyer6, anything that Stoid can’t have in the quantities she wants IS extreme deprivation. And oppression. And sexism. And discrimination. And it’s probably downright unlawful.
I kept waiting for the punchline, because that had to be a joke. But it wasn’t…it wasn’t a joke. They just kept going. Kept getting flakier. How can people believe in a kind and loving god when people like this are allowed to exist?
Ah, you see Harborwolf here’s the rub - a lot of people here don’t believe in ‘a kind and loving god’; and ‘people like this’ are ‘allowed’ - nay, encouraged - to exist purely for the amusement of others. Like clown school, only clownier. Slapstick. Where you want to slap 'em with a stick.
You know what I’m really fucking sick of, even more than Stoid’s Taube worship? Men around here insulting other men by insinuating that they have female body parts, like being a woman would somehow make the insultee lesser. Grow the fuck up already. :mad:
Fucking agreed. The reverse is almost as bad: women who talk admiringly and jokingly about the balls on another woman, as though if you’re really bold, you must have male genitalia. It’s the sort of insidious sexist nonsense that makes you sound like a stuck-up prude to object to, but it’s still insidious sexist nonsense.
I found an interesting review of someone’s favorite author on Skeptic. The reviewer starts off by summarizing Taubes’ argument
And then goes on to slam him
She goes on to debunk many of the other fallacies in Taubes’ reasoning.
While the reviewer makes a persuasive case against Taubes, the review itself is incomplete as she fails to note the collateral damage of endless treads by the true believers.
