Taubes’ concern as I remember it was that mainstream nutrition was trying to get people to eat less fat at the same time they were trying to get people to eat less meat (ie protein). Since people generally eat a constant number of calories a day and since calories come from fat, protein, or carbohydrates, effectively mainstream nutrition was telling people to eat more carbohydrates. This was accurately reflected in the food pyramid where carbohydrates form the base and are most strongly encouraged, and in guidelines that say diets should be 55–75% carbohydrate.
Your statements here sound pretty damning, but in the gestalt impression I remember from his book, I don’t remember Taubes pushing a claim that the government/mainstream was pro-sugar so much as a claim that the government/mainstream was pro-carbohydrate. This is both much more plausible, and totally sufficient to form a foil to Taubes’ carbohydrates-are-bad theory. The sugar angle seems like kind of a distraction here.
Since people generally eat a constant number of calories a day and since calories come from fat, protein, or carbohydrates, effectively mainstream nutrition was telling people to eat more carbohydrates.
Generally, when people restrict the type of foods they eat, they wind up eating less calories, so this statement is not entirely valid. As far as I recall, mainstream media was trying to get people to eat less fat and eat the minimum amount of protein needed for sustenance (which is arguably low but that’s another debate entirely). If people had followed this advice, the total number of calories would be reduced.
Here I think you genuinely disagree with Taubes, who believes that people have a caloric set point of sorts and that they are never going to actually decrease the calories they take in, especially if they’re not really trying to do so and just pursuing a separate goal like “cut down on fat”.
Defining set points isn’t easy. The general observation is that cybernetic principles provide a useful model for various body processes.
Blood pressure get’s for example regulated in a complex way but we have no real way to read the set point for it from the body or change the set point. It simply stored somewhere in the brain.
If you are looking at any body parameter where it’s important that it stays within a certain range it’s a good guess that the body uses cybernetic principles to regulate it.
I don’t exactly remember, but I think it’s whatever is a healthy weight for your height/age, plus or minus a genetic factor. And drugs/diseases/diets that make people obese do so by disrupting the set point or the body’s ability to conform to the set point.
The explanation offered on the page you linked seems more psychological (i.e. “I want to return to the weight I’m used to”) rather than having any basis in the biological needs of the body. Is this assessment correct?
I don’t think anything in that posts suggests a “psychological” view of obesity set points. The experiments where people were fed a certain diet (whose amount of calories they didn’t know, and presumably had no access to scales) yet still felt a strong urge to eat the amount of calories that returns them to their set point seems strongly against that explanation. Then the rat studies help clarify that in even more controlled conditions. It would be very strange for set points in humans and rats to have the same properties, but for the mechanisms to have nothing to do with one another.
Feelings of satiation are caused by many factors, including neural signals from the gut (which supposedly is not enough to explain the alleged obesity set-point), hormones due to blood levels of carbohydrates, and also blood levels of amino acids and lipids. In addition, they are caused by levels of insulin, glucagon, and cholecystokinin, among others.
The desire to eat more may simply be because the rat wants to maintain the levels of these hormones that they’re used to. There is absolutely no reason to think (based on these experiments, at least) that there’s a set-point that is based on ‘healthy weight for your height/age, plus or minus a genetic factor’. In fact the very article you linked strongly agrees with this viewpoint and disagrees with your view.
The reason I mentioned the bait-and-switch is because the mechanisms controlling eating in humans are very likely, in my opinion, to be different from rats. Note that this isn’t the same as saying the reasons are disjoint. It could be that we have the same underlyling mechanisms as rats, but also a large psychological component on top of that, that effectively prevents being able to directly compare rats and humans.
Taubes’ concern as I remember it was that mainstream nutrition was trying to get people to eat less fat at the same time they were trying to get people to eat less meat (ie protein). Since people generally eat a constant number of calories a day and since calories come from fat, protein, or carbohydrates, effectively mainstream nutrition was telling people to eat more carbohydrates. This was accurately reflected in the food pyramid where carbohydrates form the base and are most strongly encouraged, and in guidelines that say diets should be 55–75% carbohydrate.
Your statements here sound pretty damning, but in the gestalt impression I remember from his book, I don’t remember Taubes pushing a claim that the government/mainstream was pro-sugar so much as a claim that the government/mainstream was pro-carbohydrate. This is both much more plausible, and totally sufficient to form a foil to Taubes’ carbohydrates-are-bad theory. The sugar angle seems like kind of a distraction here.
Generally, when people restrict the type of foods they eat, they wind up eating less calories, so this statement is not entirely valid. As far as I recall, mainstream media was trying to get people to eat less fat and eat the minimum amount of protein needed for sustenance (which is arguably low but that’s another debate entirely). If people had followed this advice, the total number of calories would be reduced.
Here I think you genuinely disagree with Taubes, who believes that people have a caloric set point of sorts and that they are never going to actually decrease the calories they take in, especially if they’re not really trying to do so and just pursuing a separate goal like “cut down on fat”.
I haven’t read his book, but how does he define this set-point?
Defining set points isn’t easy. The general observation is that cybernetic principles provide a useful model for various body processes.
Blood pressure get’s for example regulated in a complex way but we have no real way to read the set point for it from the body or change the set point. It simply stored somewhere in the brain.
If you are looking at any body parameter where it’s important that it stays within a certain range it’s a good guess that the body uses cybernetic principles to regulate it.
I don’t exactly remember, but I think it’s whatever is a healthy weight for your height/age, plus or minus a genetic factor. And drugs/diseases/diets that make people obese do so by disrupting the set point or the body’s ability to conform to the set point.
See also here
The explanation offered on the page you linked seems more psychological (i.e. “I want to return to the weight I’m used to”) rather than having any basis in the biological needs of the body. Is this assessment correct?
That wasn’t my impression. See for example the paragraphs about the rats given foods of different caloric densities.
We were talking about people. No bait-and-switch, Yvain!
I don’t think anything in that posts suggests a “psychological” view of obesity set points. The experiments where people were fed a certain diet (whose amount of calories they didn’t know, and presumably had no access to scales) yet still felt a strong urge to eat the amount of calories that returns them to their set point seems strongly against that explanation. Then the rat studies help clarify that in even more controlled conditions. It would be very strange for set points in humans and rats to have the same properties, but for the mechanisms to have nothing to do with one another.
Feelings of satiation are caused by many factors, including neural signals from the gut (which supposedly is not enough to explain the alleged obesity set-point), hormones due to blood levels of carbohydrates, and also blood levels of amino acids and lipids. In addition, they are caused by levels of insulin, glucagon, and cholecystokinin, among others.
The desire to eat more may simply be because the rat wants to maintain the levels of these hormones that they’re used to. There is absolutely no reason to think (based on these experiments, at least) that there’s a set-point that is based on ‘healthy weight for your height/age, plus or minus a genetic factor’. In fact the very article you linked strongly agrees with this viewpoint and disagrees with your view.
The reason I mentioned the bait-and-switch is because the mechanisms controlling eating in humans are very likely, in my opinion, to be different from rats. Note that this isn’t the same as saying the reasons are disjoint. It could be that we have the same underlyling mechanisms as rats, but also a large psychological component on top of that, that effectively prevents being able to directly compare rats and humans.