Playing gotcha with with quotes that don’t hedge enough on extreme cases of caloric intake doesn’t seem like the best way to go about this. Maybe concentrate the critique a little more?
Taubes would agree that someone who is overweight necessarily has consumed more calories than they have burned. He’s said so in maybe every interview I’ve ever heard with him. His claim is that that is epiphenomenal to a metabolic condition that prevents people from using fat as an energy source, which is in turn caused by excess carbohydrate intake.
Is there good reason to think he is wrong about that? Or does mainstream nutrition science agree with that view—despite what they’ve recommended to people for the last 30 years?
Perhaps part of the problem is that it’s not 100% clear what Taubes’ position is. It’s arguably in his financial interest to leave his position ambiguous. There is huge marketing value in giving people permission to pig out; at the same time it’s easier to defend his position if he doesn’t approve of pigging out.
His position seems plenty clear to me as far as anyone’s position is clear: Obesity isn’t about pigging out, it’s about consuming refined carbohydrates.
His position seems plenty clear to me as far as anyone’s position is clear: Obesity isn’t about pigging out, it’s about consuming refined carbohydrates.
(I’ve gotta say, the word “about” has always peeved me whenever people claim that “X is about Y.” Ever since I was in college and I heard feminists asserting that “rape is about power not about sex.” )
But anyway, you seem to be saying that, according to Taubes, if you simply avoid eating refined carbohydrates, you can eat other foods ad libitum and avoid obesity. Is that pretty much it?
Also, could you define the phrase “refined carbohydrates” for me?
But anyway, you seem to be saying that, according to Taubes, if you simply avoid eating refined carbohydrates, you can eat other foods ad libitum and avoid obesity. Is that pretty much it?
Yes.
Also, could you define the phrase “refined carbohydrates” for me?
No. There are adequate definitions that are easily googleable. And precisely how I might disagree with those definitions isn’t important since you and I aren’t going to have an extended conversation about this. If you’re curious you can read the discussion I’ll have with Chris.
No. There are adequate definitions that are easily googleable.
If that’s the case, then it’s odd you wouldn’t simply take a few seconds to Google, cut, paste, and link your definition. Your choice seems to support my hypothesis that Taubes’ position is unclear.
And precisely how I might disagree with those definitions isn’t important since you and I aren’t going to have an extended conversation about this.
If you choose not to back up your claim that Taubes’ position is “plenty clear,” I will choose to draw my own conclusions. Your choice and my choice.
If you choose not to back up your claim that Taubes’ position is “plenty clear,” I will choose to draw my own conclusions. Your choice and my choice.
I have however-many years of reading your comments here and your barely-positive karma ratio to remind me that you will be drawing your own conclusions completely independently of someone else being able to back up their claims.
I have however-many years of reading your comments here and your barely-positive karma ratio
In the time it took you to compose this thinly-veiled ad homenim attack, you could have easily Googled, cut, pasted, and linked this definition which is supposedly so easy to find.
But instead, you prefer to change the subject from the definition of “refined carbohydrate” to my merit as a poster.
An ad homenim is an attempt to tarnish a person’s position by criticizing the person. I’m not doing that at all and if anyone else is unable to a definition by googling they can ask me and I’ll point that in the right direction. I brought up my opinion on you as a poster to explain to you why I’m not going to debate the subject with you.
But by all means, take my response as a concession. You’re victorious and have successfully show Gary Taubes position to be unclear.
I have on many occasions, including this one, googled “refined carbohydrate” and I am not convinced that I have found anyone who means anything by it, let alone that a significant number of people mean the same thing by it.
Added: no, a lot of people do mean something: they mean “carbohydrate.”
An ad homenim is an attempt to tarnish a person’s position by criticizing the person.
Well you have certainly criticized me. Although you claim that it was done simply to “to explain to you why I’m not going to debate the subject with you,” you said nothing about that in your earlier post. Here’s what you said:
I have however-many years of reading your comments here and your barely-positive karma ratio to remind me that you will be drawing your own conclusions completely independently of someone else being able to back up their claims.
Besides your nasty tone, there was nothing in there about it being an explanation for why you did not want to have a discussion with me.
But by all means, take my response as a concession
I will—it’s pretty obvious why you keep trying to shift the exchange away from your earlier claim about the clarity of Taubes’ position.
By the way, it’s fascinating that you perceive a simple request for a definition as “debate.” I haven’t yet disputed that you have accurately summarized Taubes’ position.
Although you claim that it was done simply to “to explain to you why I’m not going to debate the subject with you,” you said nothing about that in your earlier post.
Back one more post:
And precisely how I might disagree with those definitions isn’t important since you and I aren’t going to have an extended conversation about this. If you’re curious you can read the discussion I’ll have with Chris.
I was trying to be polite...
I will—it’s pretty obvious why you keep trying to shift the exchange away from your earlier claim about the clarity of Taubes’ position.
If literally anyone else thinks this they are welcome to say so and I will talk with them about it. Done now.
If that’s true, I would hate to see you trying to be unpleasant. You could have easily said—right from the beginning—“based on your previous posts I prefer not to engage with you.” But instead you were nasty, rude, and by some strange coincidence, engaged in an “appeal to Google” when I put your position under a little scrutiny. And it was only then that you decided that you did not want to discuss substance with me.
Anyway, I am repeating my earlier request:
Please give me your definition of “refined carbohydrates” so that I can understand your view about Taubes’ position.
But anyway, you seem to be saying that, according to Taubes, if you simply avoid eating refined carbohydrates, you can eat other foods ad libitum and avoid obesity. Is that pretty much it?
This is looking ahead two posts into my plans for the series, but it seems to me that Taubes’ position on calories ends up not even being coherent.
This idea of calorie intake and expenditure being an epiphenomenon… Taubes certainly does say things that seem to suggest that, but what it would even mean for that to be true?
If you could explain in a little more detail what you think Taubes is trying to say here, I’d appreciate it. But I’ve re-read the relevant sections of Taubes’ books several times, and I can’t see a charitable way to interpret it.
Yeah, I was trying not to pull you ahead. But dealing with the big picture is more my style.
Taubes certainly does say things that seem to suggest that, but what it would even mean for that to be true?
I think he says it pretty directly actually. Good Calories, Bad Calories:
When Rony discussed positive energy balance, he compared the situation with what happens in growing children. “The caloric balance is known to be positive in growing children,” he observed. But children do not grow because they eat voraciously; rather, they eat voraciously because they are growing. They require the excess calories to satisfy the requirements of growth; the result is positive energy balance. The growth is induced by hormones and, in
particular, by growth hormone. This is the same path of cause and effect that would be taken by anyone who is driven to put on fat by a metabolic or hormonal disorder. The disorder will cause the excess growth—horizontal, in effect, rather than vertical. For every calorie stored as fat or lean tissue, the body will require that an extra calorie either be consumed or conserved. As a result, anyone driven to put on fat by such a metabolic or hormonal defect would be driven to excessive eating, physical inactivity, or some combination. Hunger and indolence would be side effects of such a hormonal defect, merely facilitating the drive to fatten. They would not be the fundamental cause. “Positive caloric balance may be regarded as the cause of fatness,” Rony explained, “when fatness is artificially produced in a normal person or animal by forced excessive feeding or forced rest, or both. But obesity ordinarily develops spontaneously; some intrinsic abnormality seems to induce the body to establish positive caloric balance leading to fat accumulation. Positive caloric balance would be, then, a result rather than a cause of the condition.”
Why We Get Fat includes more like the above, but the copy I have with me doesn’t allow for easy copy and pasting. But that’s the story basically. Yes, people who are fat are going to necessarily have had a positive caloric-intake balance from when they were not fat. But that doesn’t mean that the causal node to intervene on is a) how much a person eats or b)how much they exercise. Taubes’s claim is that the fat composition of your body is determined by your hormones, insulin in particular which is secreted based on your blood-sugar levels. Your body then overeats—or avoids burning calories—to compensate.
Illustrative of this effect are a wide variety of lab animal experiments that induce obesity by manipulating the animal’s endocrine system while controlling food intake.
Why don’t we start there. What do you find incoherent about that?
But children do not grow because they eat voraciously; rather, they eat voraciously because they are growing.
Taken literally, this is false. Children voraciously isn’t literally an epiphenomenon of their growth. If it were, children would still grow regardless of how little they eat. But in fact, not eating enough when you’re a kid stunts your growth.
Of course, one way to defend Taubes here is to assume a lot of his rhetoric isn’t meant to be taken literally. But the farther you go in that direction, the less he ends up disagreeing with mainstream nutrition, and the harder it is to make sense of the things he says about how awful mainstream nutrition science is supposed to be.
Taken literally, this is false. Children voraciously isn’t literally an epiphenomenon of their growth.
Where did “epiphenomenon” come from? I think you’re interpreting him far too uncharitably; he’s not saying “how much a child eats has no impact on their growth,” and indeed he’s saying the opposite. He’s saying that the causal chain starts with the growth hormone, which influences how much they eat, and then the hormone and how much they eat influence how much taller they grow. (And he’s unclear in the first sentence, but I’m pretty sure he does mean taller, not just larger.)
So it is; I agree with you that epiphenomenon is not a sensible description of the impact of eating on growth, and I disagree with Jack; I don’t think that’s a good description of Taubes’s passage there.
Taken literally, this is false. Children voraciously isn’t literally an epiphenomenon of their growth. If it were, children would still grow regardless of how little they eat. But in fact, not eating enough when you’re a kid stunts your growth.
It is literally true. Notice the tense. It’s not an effect of their growth it’s an effect of their being something that is growing—having a hormonal system that is aligned toward increasing size.
What are you not buying—that that’s what Taubes is saying? Because there’s some pretty direct cites here and also your pointless refusal to listen to what is a pretty clear explanation makes you look arbitrarily closed-minded.
This idea of calorie intake and expenditure being an epiphenomenon… Taubes certainly does say things that seem to suggest that, but what it would even mean for that to be true?
“Epiphenomenon” is somewhat hyperbolic, but it does make a sensible claim. To make clear what that claim is, it is necessary to think about causal graphs, because intervention in a system to produce a desired result can only be successful if it is based on a correct understanding of how the system works.
“dW/dt = Calories in—calories out”, while literally true, carries with it the suggestion that a sufficiently accurate causal graph for this problem is one with two arrows, from input to weight and from output to weight. All you have to do to lose weight is to eat less and/or exercise more.
If the causal model is correct, the predicted result of an intervention will happen. If the predicted result does not happen, the model is wrong.
It seems to be more often the experience than not, that the predicted result does not happen. This brings the model into question.
Causal models make two sorts of claim: the claims that are seen, and the claims that are not seen. The claims that are seen are the variables and the arrows of the model: they claim that these properties of the world exist, and these causal influences exist among them. The claims that are not seen are the absences of variables and arrows. Where there is no arrow, the model claims that there is no direct causal effect. Where there is no variable, the model claims there is no other phenomenon in the world causally relevant to the things being modelled.
To repeat in the face of the failed prediction, “but...input minus output!” is to attend only to the claim that is seen. One of the claims that is not seen in this model is the absence of an arrow from input to output. Suppose we hypothetically add one: suppose that restricting calorie intake makes the body reduce its expenditure also. (Or in concrete terms: skip eating for a day and collapse with exhaustion.) What is now the effect on weight of eating less? That depends on the details and relative magnitudes of how these things influence each other. That is just one example. There are many ways in which “dW/dt = Calories in—calories out” could be embedded in a larger graph for which the claimed remedy for overweight will fail. When they fail, it is not because “dW/dt = Calories in—calories out” is false, but because it is incomplete.
For the case of growing children, where it is was said that they eat because they are growing, rather than growing because they eat, the claimed causal graph appears to be something like this: the body’s internal processes of development cause a demand for food; the demand for food causes eating; eating makes materials available for growth; growth is sensed by the body’s internal processes of development, which adjusts demand for food accordingly. The causal arrows form a cycle, part of which I’ve nebulously called “the body’s internal processes”. There will be an arrow into that node from other internal processes, specifying how fast to grow. (Observe that overfed chidren do not develop normally, but faster; they develop at the same speed and also grow fat.) That is what is driving the cycle, hence the paradoxical sounding “they eat because they are growing, rather than growing because they eat”.
Notice that most of these hypothetical causal graphs describe processes internal to the organism and difficult to observe or intervene on, and not all that much is definitively known. This is what makes this a hard problem. It is doubly hard if one does not realise that one must think in these terms to make any progress.
I haven’t read Taubes’ books, but I have read some of his blog posts and here’s how I understand this position. I’m not very certain that my understanding is correct, but maybe this will help.
He agrees the “simple thermodynamic” calories in—calories out = weight gain model is (necessarily) true. But he thinks it’s misleading and isn’t helpful, because it focuses on the (high) calories in and (low) calories out as the causes of weight gain, as if they were solely and directly influenced by deliberate behavioral choice. He says they are proximate, not ultimate causes, and are mostly determined by various complex metabolic states. And these states are in turn influenced, among other things, by the makeup of the diet—rather than just by its caloric value.
So if not conscious behavior, what determines calories in and out? For instance, various metabolic and hormonal states determine the level of hunger, food cravings, etc.
What his epiphenomenal claim means, if true, is that the causal graph doesn’t look like this:
Decide what and how much to eat ⇒ Eat as decided ⇒ Lose or gain weight
But like this:
Eat something ⇒ Metabolic state changes depending on diet ⇒ Hunger levels and specific cravings change in response to metabolic state ⇒ Eating behavior changes in response to hunger.
And in particular:
Eat refined carbs ⇒ hunger levels rise, more food cravings ⇒ end up eating more ⇒ weight gain, sometimes in a runaway positive feedback loop leading to obesity.
On his blog he goes into a lot of detail about the biochemistry of hormonal signals relating to hunger, and to fat storage and release; I can’t really follow those discussions.
I think in general mainstream diet advice, by the time it is filtered down to nurses comments and PSA’s, ends up being on the order of “choose to eat less food and burn more calories through exercise” and virtually none of “did you know that what you eat can determine how hungry you are?”
Actually, a lot of people do. They might not be the “nutritional experts”, but it is a common enough position (here for example) that it needs to be addressed.
Eat something ⇒ Metabolic state changes depending on diet ⇒ Hunger levels and specific cravings change in response to metabolic state ⇒ Eating behavior changes in response to hunger.
Looks reasonable. Are you sure you’re not steelmanning his position?
I’m giving my best understanding of his position. And I didn’t read his book, only some (admittedly very detailed and technical) blog posts. So I might well be filling in some gaps and misremembering what exactly he wrote. But that’s useful too surely—if the evidence he presents in his book and elsewhere works as evidence for this steelmanned argument.
I think he may be clarifying or simplfying his position, but this is the same impression I have from sources that reference Taubes, such as the movie Fathead.
This idea of calorie intake and expenditure being an epiphenomenon… Taubes certainly does say things that seem to suggest that, but what it would even mean for that to be true?
Calorie intake and expenditure are automatically regulated by the body, and in a healthy person, marginal increases or decreases in calorie intake will cause matching changes to both appetite and to energy expenditure, by changing body temperature, fidgeting, and other expendable metabolic processes. Large, forced decreases in calorie intake must cause either a balancing release of energy from fat cells, or a matching reduction in energy expenditure, but unfortunately, it’s likely to be the latter. In that case, the energy expenditure comes from sacrificing metabolic processes that aren’t really expendable, damaging health. Obesity can only occur if this regulatory process is broken somehow. It is more likely to be broken by a high-carbohydrate diet than by a high-fat diet. If it’s broken in someone who’s on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, then switching to a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet is likely to fix it.
The previous paragraph is what I believe to be true. I don’t know how well it lines up with what Taubes has said, but I don’t care because Taubes is just a human. It does seem that he’s failed to communicate it clearly, but if you’re going to criticize him for that, the criticism should be delivered in the context of a clear restatement of the same position. If you’re going to go around saying things that are incompatible with the previous, then please address it directly; everything you’ve said so far is at least one step removed, and it’s frustrating because you keep saying things that aren’t even wrong.
Are you saying that at no point of our evolution did our ancestors benefit from gaining a little storage fat in a way that we inherited, and even if they did, the only way to use those stores would be damaging?
Consider that the need for extra fat storage may often be seasonally based. Our bodies could sense upcomnig times of scarcity based on temperature, sunlight, and the types of food available (different fruits or vegetables ripe, etc.)
All of these cues are of course scrambled to various extents in our (understandable) drive for optimal comfort at any time.
Those are good points, and I think there probably has been a conscious component in such behaviour too in later ancestors, and these same cues might affect hunger just as well as metabolism.
It sure slows down fat accumulation but has other functions too, like not getting so full you’re not able do anything else than digest food.
Also there are plausible reasons why you would eat past satiation. Satiation is not necessarily the same thing as not getting pleasure from eating excess food, especially if you live in an environment where food could become temporarily scarce.
I also talked about satiation here, and don’t find attacking this issue just from a single angle at once useful.
Why would evolution have applied strong braking mechanisms to the accumulation of fat?
If humans evolved under conditions where there was usually a calorie surplus available, then humans wouldn’t have evolved in such a way that it would just keep storing fat for as long as it could.
So
1) were our foraging ancestors chronically malnourished? (I think no)
2) are there any individuals who don’t store additional fat despite eating as much as they want? (I think yes and I think I am one)
There’s satiety, there’s increases in energy expenditure, there’s allocation of excess energy into lean body mass, etc. There’s lots of stuff the body might potentially do with extra energy other than throw it away or turn it into fat.
were our foraging ancestors chronically malnourished? (I think no)
Wrong question. Would there have been several times when stored fat could have been useful? You think all the millions of years were smooth sailing?
How much can you eat in calories without getting fat? Have you tried eating say 5000kcal a day without exercise? I could have probably eaten that much as a teenager but I also exercised a lot back then. Now I can eat maybe 2000-2500kcal without getting fat. Muscle is much easier to gain too now. There definitely are individuals who can eat pretty safely as much as they want, and most of them are young.
Have you tried eating say 5000kcal a day without exercise?
Of course not, but to the extent that such an experiment would be revealing: an individual named Sam Feltham reportedly did try a similar stunt − 5000kcal of low-carb-high-fat diet for 21 days—without gaining much weight. He didn’t stop the exercise he was already doing, but he did account for the exercise in his caloric expenditure calculations.
If we trust his honesty, then it’s safe to say that at some individuals exists who don’t gain weight in response to eating a lot of some calorie sources.
You’d be surprised how many of my Medline searches on specific issues that should be simple to research return nothing. Maybe I just suck at searching. Also, much of the research on “established facts” is so old it’s difficult to access electronically.
It’s not exactly a stunt. I’ve seen several people who eat much as 10000 kcal a day, all of them severely obese. Of course, they’re not on a low carb diet, but eating 5000 kcal is a breeze if you put your mind to it. I could do it easily if I wanted to too.
I totally believe he did that and didn’t gain weight, but that might not tell us much about people in general.
1) were our foraging ancestors chronically malnourished? (I think no)
It’s not like evolution magically stopped when agriculture was introduced, and early farmers were chronically malnourished. (It has had less time to operate since then than before then, though.)
Playing gotcha with with quotes that don’t hedge enough on extreme cases of caloric intake doesn’t seem like the best way to go about this. Maybe concentrate the critique a little more?
Taubes would agree that someone who is overweight necessarily has consumed more calories than they have burned. He’s said so in maybe every interview I’ve ever heard with him. His claim is that that is epiphenomenal to a metabolic condition that prevents people from using fat as an energy source, which is in turn caused by excess carbohydrate intake.
Is there good reason to think he is wrong about that? Or does mainstream nutrition science agree with that view—despite what they’ve recommended to people for the last 30 years?
Perhaps part of the problem is that it’s not 100% clear what Taubes’ position is. It’s arguably in his financial interest to leave his position ambiguous. There is huge marketing value in giving people permission to pig out; at the same time it’s easier to defend his position if he doesn’t approve of pigging out.
His position seems plenty clear to me as far as anyone’s position is clear: Obesity isn’t about pigging out, it’s about consuming refined carbohydrates.
(I’ve gotta say, the word “about” has always peeved me whenever people claim that “X is about Y.” Ever since I was in college and I heard feminists asserting that “rape is about power not about sex.” )
But anyway, you seem to be saying that, according to Taubes, if you simply avoid eating refined carbohydrates, you can eat other foods ad libitum and avoid obesity. Is that pretty much it?
Also, could you define the phrase “refined carbohydrates” for me?
Yes.
No. There are adequate definitions that are easily googleable. And precisely how I might disagree with those definitions isn’t important since you and I aren’t going to have an extended conversation about this. If you’re curious you can read the discussion I’ll have with Chris.
If that’s the case, then it’s odd you wouldn’t simply take a few seconds to Google, cut, paste, and link your definition. Your choice seems to support my hypothesis that Taubes’ position is unclear.
If you choose not to back up your claim that Taubes’ position is “plenty clear,” I will choose to draw my own conclusions. Your choice and my choice.
I have however-many years of reading your comments here and your barely-positive karma ratio to remind me that you will be drawing your own conclusions completely independently of someone else being able to back up their claims.
In the time it took you to compose this thinly-veiled ad homenim attack, you could have easily Googled, cut, pasted, and linked this definition which is supposedly so easy to find.
But instead, you prefer to change the subject from the definition of “refined carbohydrate” to my merit as a poster.
An ad homenim is an attempt to tarnish a person’s position by criticizing the person. I’m not doing that at all and if anyone else is unable to a definition by googling they can ask me and I’ll point that in the right direction. I brought up my opinion on you as a poster to explain to you why I’m not going to debate the subject with you.
But by all means, take my response as a concession. You’re victorious and have successfully show Gary Taubes position to be unclear.
I have on many occasions, including this one, googled “refined carbohydrate” and I am not convinced that I have found anyone who means anything by it, let alone that a significant number of people mean the same thing by it.
Added: no, a lot of people do mean something: they mean “carbohydrate.”
I just googled it. I suspect that the “refined” in “refined carbohydrates” is a stand-in for “bad, for reasons left unspecified.”
Refined means that somebody has done something to it. Like for example purified it or changed it to something sweeter that get digested faster.
Well you have certainly criticized me. Although you claim that it was done simply to “to explain to you why I’m not going to debate the subject with you,” you said nothing about that in your earlier post. Here’s what you said:
Besides your nasty tone, there was nothing in there about it being an explanation for why you did not want to have a discussion with me.
I will—it’s pretty obvious why you keep trying to shift the exchange away from your earlier claim about the clarity of Taubes’ position.
By the way, it’s fascinating that you perceive a simple request for a definition as “debate.” I haven’t yet disputed that you have accurately summarized Taubes’ position.
Back one more post:
I was trying to be polite...
If literally anyone else thinks this they are welcome to say so and I will talk with them about it. Done now.
If that’s true, I would hate to see you trying to be unpleasant. You could have easily said—right from the beginning—“based on your previous posts I prefer not to engage with you.” But instead you were nasty, rude, and by some strange coincidence, engaged in an “appeal to Google” when I put your position under a little scrutiny. And it was only then that you decided that you did not want to discuss substance with me.
Anyway, I am repeating my earlier request:
Please give me your definition of “refined carbohydrates” so that I can understand your view about Taubes’ position.
TIA.
This is just a bookmark post, no need to respond.
I really like this fragment.
Jack,
This is looking ahead two posts into my plans for the series, but it seems to me that Taubes’ position on calories ends up not even being coherent.
This idea of calorie intake and expenditure being an epiphenomenon… Taubes certainly does say things that seem to suggest that, but what it would even mean for that to be true?
If you could explain in a little more detail what you think Taubes is trying to say here, I’d appreciate it. But I’ve re-read the relevant sections of Taubes’ books several times, and I can’t see a charitable way to interpret it.
Yeah, I was trying not to pull you ahead. But dealing with the big picture is more my style.
I think he says it pretty directly actually. Good Calories, Bad Calories:
Why We Get Fat includes more like the above, but the copy I have with me doesn’t allow for easy copy and pasting. But that’s the story basically. Yes, people who are fat are going to necessarily have had a positive caloric-intake balance from when they were not fat. But that doesn’t mean that the causal node to intervene on is a) how much a person eats or b)how much they exercise. Taubes’s claim is that the fat composition of your body is determined by your hormones, insulin in particular which is secreted based on your blood-sugar levels. Your body then overeats—or avoids burning calories—to compensate.
Illustrative of this effect are a wide variety of lab animal experiments that induce obesity by manipulating the animal’s endocrine system while controlling food intake.
Why don’t we start there. What do you find incoherent about that?
Taken literally, this is false. Children voraciously isn’t literally an epiphenomenon of their growth. If it were, children would still grow regardless of how little they eat. But in fact, not eating enough when you’re a kid stunts your growth.
Of course, one way to defend Taubes here is to assume a lot of his rhetoric isn’t meant to be taken literally. But the farther you go in that direction, the less he ends up disagreeing with mainstream nutrition, and the harder it is to make sense of the things he says about how awful mainstream nutrition science is supposed to be.
Where did “epiphenomenon” come from? I think you’re interpreting him far too uncharitably; he’s not saying “how much a child eats has no impact on their growth,” and indeed he’s saying the opposite. He’s saying that the causal chain starts with the growth hormone, which influences how much they eat, and then the hormone and how much they eat influence how much taller they grow. (And he’s unclear in the first sentence, but I’m pretty sure he does mean taller, not just larger.)
It was Jack who first used the word “epiphenomenal” upthread.
So it is; I agree with you that epiphenomenon is not a sensible description of the impact of eating on growth, and I disagree with Jack; I don’t think that’s a good description of Taubes’s passage there.
It is literally true. Notice the tense. It’s not an effect of their growth it’s an effect of their being something that is growing—having a hormonal system that is aligned toward increasing size.
Are you saying that children would grow eating nothing? If not, what’s with the word games?
Cells won’t grow from nothing unless they’re made of nothing.
Sorry, not buying it.
Not buying what? I’m just explaining the position and asking what you find incoherent about it.
What are you not buying—that that’s what Taubes is saying? Because there’s some pretty direct cites here and also your pointless refusal to listen to what is a pretty clear explanation makes you look arbitrarily closed-minded.
“Epiphenomenon” is somewhat hyperbolic, but it does make a sensible claim. To make clear what that claim is, it is necessary to think about causal graphs, because intervention in a system to produce a desired result can only be successful if it is based on a correct understanding of how the system works.
“dW/dt = Calories in—calories out”, while literally true, carries with it the suggestion that a sufficiently accurate causal graph for this problem is one with two arrows, from input to weight and from output to weight. All you have to do to lose weight is to eat less and/or exercise more.
If the causal model is correct, the predicted result of an intervention will happen. If the predicted result does not happen, the model is wrong.
It seems to be more often the experience than not, that the predicted result does not happen. This brings the model into question.
Causal models make two sorts of claim: the claims that are seen, and the claims that are not seen. The claims that are seen are the variables and the arrows of the model: they claim that these properties of the world exist, and these causal influences exist among them. The claims that are not seen are the absences of variables and arrows. Where there is no arrow, the model claims that there is no direct causal effect. Where there is no variable, the model claims there is no other phenomenon in the world causally relevant to the things being modelled.
To repeat in the face of the failed prediction, “but...input minus output!” is to attend only to the claim that is seen. One of the claims that is not seen in this model is the absence of an arrow from input to output. Suppose we hypothetically add one: suppose that restricting calorie intake makes the body reduce its expenditure also. (Or in concrete terms: skip eating for a day and collapse with exhaustion.) What is now the effect on weight of eating less? That depends on the details and relative magnitudes of how these things influence each other. That is just one example. There are many ways in which “dW/dt = Calories in—calories out” could be embedded in a larger graph for which the claimed remedy for overweight will fail. When they fail, it is not because “dW/dt = Calories in—calories out” is false, but because it is incomplete.
For the case of growing children, where it is was said that they eat because they are growing, rather than growing because they eat, the claimed causal graph appears to be something like this: the body’s internal processes of development cause a demand for food; the demand for food causes eating; eating makes materials available for growth; growth is sensed by the body’s internal processes of development, which adjusts demand for food accordingly. The causal arrows form a cycle, part of which I’ve nebulously called “the body’s internal processes”. There will be an arrow into that node from other internal processes, specifying how fast to grow. (Observe that overfed chidren do not develop normally, but faster; they develop at the same speed and also grow fat.) That is what is driving the cycle, hence the paradoxical sounding “they eat because they are growing, rather than growing because they eat”.
Notice that most of these hypothetical causal graphs describe processes internal to the organism and difficult to observe or intervene on, and not all that much is definitively known. This is what makes this a hard problem. It is doubly hard if one does not realise that one must think in these terms to make any progress.
I haven’t read Taubes’ books, but I have read some of his blog posts and here’s how I understand this position. I’m not very certain that my understanding is correct, but maybe this will help.
He agrees the “simple thermodynamic” calories in—calories out = weight gain model is (necessarily) true. But he thinks it’s misleading and isn’t helpful, because it focuses on the (high) calories in and (low) calories out as the causes of weight gain, as if they were solely and directly influenced by deliberate behavioral choice. He says they are proximate, not ultimate causes, and are mostly determined by various complex metabolic states. And these states are in turn influenced, among other things, by the makeup of the diet—rather than just by its caloric value.
So if not conscious behavior, what determines calories in and out? For instance, various metabolic and hormonal states determine the level of hunger, food cravings, etc.
What his epiphenomenal claim means, if true, is that the causal graph doesn’t look like this:
Decide what and how much to eat ⇒ Eat as decided ⇒ Lose or gain weight
But like this:
Eat something ⇒ Metabolic state changes depending on diet ⇒ Hunger levels and specific cravings change in response to metabolic state ⇒ Eating behavior changes in response to hunger.
And in particular:
Eat refined carbs ⇒ hunger levels rise, more food cravings ⇒ end up eating more ⇒ weight gain, sometimes in a runaway positive feedback loop leading to obesity.
On his blog he goes into a lot of detail about the biochemistry of hormonal signals relating to hunger, and to fat storage and release; I can’t really follow those discussions.
The problem is that nobody in mainstream nutrition science actually thinks that.
I think in general mainstream diet advice, by the time it is filtered down to nurses comments and PSA’s, ends up being on the order of “choose to eat less food and burn more calories through exercise” and virtually none of “did you know that what you eat can determine how hungry you are?”
Actually, a lot of people do. They might not be the “nutritional experts”, but it is a common enough position (here for example) that it needs to be addressed.
Sure it’s worth addressing. But in a way that doesn’t imply it’s what the experts think, which Taubes does.
That linked comment doesn’t actually seem to say what you think it says.
Looks reasonable. Are you sure you’re not steelmanning his position?
I’m giving my best understanding of his position. And I didn’t read his book, only some (admittedly very detailed and technical) blog posts. So I might well be filling in some gaps and misremembering what exactly he wrote. But that’s useful too surely—if the evidence he presents in his book and elsewhere works as evidence for this steelmanned argument.
I think he may be clarifying or simplfying his position, but this is the same impression I have from sources that reference Taubes, such as the movie Fathead.
Calorie intake and expenditure are automatically regulated by the body, and in a healthy person, marginal increases or decreases in calorie intake will cause matching changes to both appetite and to energy expenditure, by changing body temperature, fidgeting, and other expendable metabolic processes. Large, forced decreases in calorie intake must cause either a balancing release of energy from fat cells, or a matching reduction in energy expenditure, but unfortunately, it’s likely to be the latter. In that case, the energy expenditure comes from sacrificing metabolic processes that aren’t really expendable, damaging health. Obesity can only occur if this regulatory process is broken somehow. It is more likely to be broken by a high-carbohydrate diet than by a high-fat diet. If it’s broken in someone who’s on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, then switching to a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet is likely to fix it.
The previous paragraph is what I believe to be true. I don’t know how well it lines up with what Taubes has said, but I don’t care because Taubes is just a human. It does seem that he’s failed to communicate it clearly, but if you’re going to criticize him for that, the criticism should be delivered in the context of a clear restatement of the same position. If you’re going to go around saying things that are incompatible with the previous, then please address it directly; everything you’ve said so far is at least one step removed, and it’s frustrating because you keep saying things that aren’t even wrong.
RETRACTED: THIS WAS BS.
Are you saying that at no point of our evolution did our ancestors benefit from gaining a little storage fat in a way that we inherited, and even if they did, the only way to use those stores would be damaging?
Consider that the need for extra fat storage may often be seasonally based. Our bodies could sense upcomnig times of scarcity based on temperature, sunlight, and the types of food available (different fruits or vegetables ripe, etc.) All of these cues are of course scrambled to various extents in our (understandable) drive for optimal comfort at any time.
[googles for
obesity air conditioning]Google for sauna for obesity while you’re at it. And sauna belt, if you want to go real extreme.
What markdown code produced that comment?
Backslashes to escape the square brackets, and backticks to produce the monospaced font.
thanks[it isn’t necessary to escape brackets]Air Conditioning causes Obesity
I’m not sure whether that is a reductio ad absurdium refutation or support.
Those are good points, and I think there probably has been a conscious component in such behaviour too in later ancestors, and these same cues might affect hunger just as well as metabolism.
No, I’m not saying that.
Sorry about the strawman. I should have just asked you some questions.
Why would evolution have applied strong braking mechanisms to the accumulation of fat?
It seems I misunderstood this too. Can you taboo large and forced?
People and other animals have satiation for food.
It sure slows down fat accumulation but has other functions too, like not getting so full you’re not able do anything else than digest food.
Also there are plausible reasons why you would eat past satiation. Satiation is not necessarily the same thing as not getting pleasure from eating excess food, especially if you live in an environment where food could become temporarily scarce.
I also talked about satiation here, and don’t find attacking this issue just from a single angle at once useful.
If humans evolved under conditions where there was usually a calorie surplus available, then humans wouldn’t have evolved in such a way that it would just keep storing fat for as long as it could.
So
1) were our foraging ancestors chronically malnourished? (I think no)
2) are there any individuals who don’t store additional fat despite eating as much as they want? (I think yes and I think I am one)
There’s satiety, there’s increases in energy expenditure, there’s allocation of excess energy into lean body mass, etc. There’s lots of stuff the body might potentially do with extra energy other than throw it away or turn it into fat.
Wrong question. Would there have been several times when stored fat could have been useful? You think all the millions of years were smooth sailing?
How much can you eat in calories without getting fat? Have you tried eating say 5000kcal a day without exercise? I could have probably eaten that much as a teenager but I also exercised a lot back then. Now I can eat maybe 2000-2500kcal without getting fat. Muscle is much easier to gain too now. There definitely are individuals who can eat pretty safely as much as they want, and most of them are young.
Of course not, but to the extent that such an experiment would be revealing: an individual named Sam Feltham reportedly did try a similar stunt − 5000kcal of low-carb-high-fat diet for 21 days—without gaining much weight. He didn’t stop the exercise he was already doing, but he did account for the exercise in his caloric expenditure calculations.
If we trust his honesty, then it’s safe to say that at some individuals exists who don’t gain weight in response to eating a lot of some calorie sources.
Overview of overfeeding experiments in humans
Thanks. I’ll have to take a good look at that.
Thanks. If it’s at all complete, I’m shocked at little research there was.
You’d be surprised how many of my Medline searches on specific issues that should be simple to research return nothing. Maybe I just suck at searching. Also, much of the research on “established facts” is so old it’s difficult to access electronically.
It’s not exactly a stunt. I’ve seen several people who eat much as 10000 kcal a day, all of them severely obese. Of course, they’re not on a low carb diet, but eating 5000 kcal is a breeze if you put your mind to it. I could do it easily if I wanted to too.
I totally believe he did that and didn’t gain weight, but that might not tell us much about people in general.
It’s not like evolution magically stopped when agriculture was introduced, and early farmers were chronically malnourished. (It has had less time to operate since then than before then, though.)
Yes, but is it less coherent than the mainstream? Or even than a typical nutritionist that claims to be mainstream?