Most people who question conventional wisdom are cranks. As a non-expert, I am not capable of evaluating the object-level arguments on the subject. Why should I grant Gary Taubes any more credibility than any other random person who writes a book with lots of footnotes?
I don’t know about heart disease and cancer risk and I’m in roughly the same epistemic position as you on that.
For plain old fat loss, though, there’s more reason to believe that more fat and protein compared to carbohydrates is effective. First, that’s what athletes and their nutrition coaches do—it’s always useful to look at the practices of people whose livelihood depends on objective success. Second, I’ve read a fair number of CDC studies showing that diets have modest to zero effect—and usually the test diets do not have a high protein + fat to carb ratio. That’s weak evidence, but evidence: the stuff that doesn’t work is not the candidate in question. Third, it just makes sense that simple sugars break down into glucose faster than anything else, which means a quick spike in blood sugar instead of slow release over time, which means you’ll be hungry soon after. No, plausible mechanisms aren’t science, but they help. Fourth, it’s easy enough to perform the experiment yourself for three months and see what happens.
If you are not confident in your own ability to recognize cranks (either in general or in a particular field) then sticking with conventional wisdom may be your best option. In general my experience is that it is not very difficult to spot genuine cranks however but YMMV. I’d suggest that health in general is a poor place to put great faith in conventional wisdom however since there are many powerful interest groups influencing things like government issued recommendations whose interests are not always well aligned with yours.
Nutrition and diet are relatively amenable to self experimentation however and so at least some claims are fairly easily testable. Obviously you aren’t going to be able to confirm claims of reducing your risk of heart disease or various cancers (for example) in the short term but claims about weight loss are trivial to verify and it is not terribly difficult to test other claims by having blood work done (triglyceride levels, LDL/HDL ratios etc.) and by keeping a record of possibly diet related symptoms under different regimes (mood, energy level crashes, digestive problems, etc.).
Most people who question conventional wisdom are cranks. As a non-expert, I am not capable of evaluating the object-level arguments on the subject. Why should I grant Gary Taubes any more credibility than any other random person who writes a book with lots of footnotes?
I haven’t read the book either.
I don’t know about heart disease and cancer risk and I’m in roughly the same epistemic position as you on that.
For plain old fat loss, though, there’s more reason to believe that more fat and protein compared to carbohydrates is effective. First, that’s what athletes and their nutrition coaches do—it’s always useful to look at the practices of people whose livelihood depends on objective success. Second, I’ve read a fair number of CDC studies showing that diets have modest to zero effect—and usually the test diets do not have a high protein + fat to carb ratio. That’s weak evidence, but evidence: the stuff that doesn’t work is not the candidate in question. Third, it just makes sense that simple sugars break down into glucose faster than anything else, which means a quick spike in blood sugar instead of slow release over time, which means you’ll be hungry soon after. No, plausible mechanisms aren’t science, but they help. Fourth, it’s easy enough to perform the experiment yourself for three months and see what happens.
If you are not confident in your own ability to recognize cranks (either in general or in a particular field) then sticking with conventional wisdom may be your best option. In general my experience is that it is not very difficult to spot genuine cranks however but YMMV. I’d suggest that health in general is a poor place to put great faith in conventional wisdom however since there are many powerful interest groups influencing things like government issued recommendations whose interests are not always well aligned with yours.
Nutrition and diet are relatively amenable to self experimentation however and so at least some claims are fairly easily testable. Obviously you aren’t going to be able to confirm claims of reducing your risk of heart disease or various cancers (for example) in the short term but claims about weight loss are trivial to verify and it is not terribly difficult to test other claims by having blood work done (triglyceride levels, LDL/HDL ratios etc.) and by keeping a record of possibly diet related symptoms under different regimes (mood, energy level crashes, digestive problems, etc.).