Big Fat Lie: Overeating is a symptom, not the cause, of Obesity!

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Gary (Taubes) is one of the smartest, toughest, most fearless science writers in the business. He sets the bar very high for his peers. Most science writers are content merely to celebrate and explain the accomplishments of scientists. That's not Gary's style. He questions scientists claims and subjects them to rigorous scrutiny. If the claim seems dubious to him he says so, no matter how accomplished the scientist may be. Gary backs up his claims with relentless in-depth reporting and research. As a result, his writings often have a major impact on the fields that he covers.

Gary is a correspondent for Science, the peer reviewed journal, and he freelances for the New York Times magazine, Discover New York magazine, The Atlantic and many other publications. He's won lots of prizes including three Science and Society awards of the National Association for Science Writers. He's written two very well received previous books, one on the Cold Fusion debacle and another on High Energy Particle Physics.

His new book, Good Calories Bad Calories, is by far his most ambitious and consequential work. It has already invoked an intense debate about how diet affects health. It's not just the work of journalism, it's a major contribution to the major scientific fields that he investigates. The historian of physics, Richard Rhodes, says that, "If Taubes were a scientist, rather than a gifted science journalist, he would deserve and receive a Nobel Prize in medicine."

Bold Emphasis Added

That was the introduction given before Taube's lectured a doctor filled room at Stevens Institute of Technology(Video Below).

Taube's broke ground and gained the attention of the world of health science in 2002 when he published an article in the New York Times, What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? In it, he describes how an accumulation of dietary/health misinformation over the past 30 years has given way to a medical community that bases it's research on bogus information. Taubes is quick to point out that many of the low-fat researchers of the 50's and 60's were shamelessly forced the acceptance of unproven theories. This is the first sentence of the New York Times article:

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.

His writings have been endorsed by the worlds leading Nutritional experts, including Andrew Weil, M.D., Mike Eades, M.D., Jonny Bowden, PhD and many others.

His new book, picture at the top, is nothing short of amazing. He examines both sides of the coin, presenting evidence, or lack thereof, for low-fat and low-carbohydrate diets that date back as far as 200 years. I love his writing style but his book is quite large, so if you'd rather not take the time to read it I'll sum it up and provide a video lecture.

Here's the summation: Obesity, and fat gain, is not a product of overeating, it's a symptom. It is a problem of fat deposition. Hormones control fat regulation so it is safe to conclude that obesity is caused by hormonal imbalance. Simple as that.

Want the evidence? You can read the book or you can watch this video of his lecture at Stevens. Please star and flag as this information needs to be seen. People need to know the BS being fed to them, regarding food and medical science.

Google Video Link

Related Threads:

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Related Links & Studies:

Long-term effects of a very-low-carbohydrate weight loss diet compared with an isocaloric low-fat diet after 12 mo
Low-carbohydrate diets increase LDL: debunking the myth
The effect of a low-fat, high-protein or high-carbohydrate ad libitum diet on weight loss maintenance and metabolic risk factors
Effects of a Low Carbohydrate Weight Loss Diet on Exercise Capacity and Tolerance in Obese Subjects
Testosterone Decreases after Ingestion of Sugar
Moderately Reduced Carbohydrate Diet Keeps People Feeling Full Longer
The energy balance equation: looking back and looking forward are two very different views

Enjoy!

-Dev

Great post!! I will have to use my roomies computer to watch the video since I have no sound. I will bring this article to a few friends and family members attention who deal with this on a daily basis. They should know the truth too! Thanks for finding this, I will have to read the other links to get a better understanding. S&F

i respect this guys work, he is a scientist who speaks to important people, so im not discrediting him..but.

i just cannot buy that obesity is not caused by eating to much ?!?!

it is most deffinitelly caused by eating to much, but... its about eating to much of the WRONG things.

compare the people of the uk now the people of the uk in the 30-40's... have you ever seen pictures of fat people back then ?! or even just a fat kid, it was very rare and not because people did not eat the same amounts, its because back then food was alot less chemical, nowadays food is filled with all sorts of crap to keep it tasty and addictive and meat (well, animals) is pumped full of hormones ect .... its all the additives that do it, if everyone had good home cooked meals (and pack lunches to work) every day things wouldnt be half as bad fat wise as they are now.

just my 2 cents ... imno scientist

Eat food + no exercise = you get fat

Go on diet + exercise = burn calories

Do i get a doctorate for those formulas?

reply to post by boaby_phet


Or maybe its all the chemicals in our foods today that are causing a hormonal imbalance? Anyway i still need to watch the video,i eat like a horse and hardly put on any weight but i have family members(most of us do) who flip flop diet to diet all the time and get nowhere...keyword is diet,they dont exercise.

reply to post by boaby_phet


You're no scientist, and neither is Gary Taubes. It's obvious you just glanced at the title and skimmed through the OP.

You are right though, it's about not eating the right foods. If you watch the video you'll understand that this guy is not some quack and he's not an idiot.

He spent over 5 years researching this subject alone.

-Dev

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety


No, you get an award for being completely unoriginal and for realizing that your "hypothesis" hasn't worked for the past 50 years. It doesn't fit. Energy balance hypotheses are headed out the door.

-Dev

I don't want to get too far into this cause I seriously do not want to look up the sources, but I know they exist and the facts have been around for a decade now.


When we are on low card, low fat diets, after a short period we certain chemical our body produces starts to get the impression that we are going through starvation. Reducing the amount of calories that are burned and feverishly attempts to store as much fat from what it intakes.

On these diets, this chemical dries up as we enter our "starvation" and the body quits shedding fat. But, the kicker is, is that you can restart the chemical by having a day of complex carb gorging. In fact, studies showed that people who stayed near starvation for several days, then had one day of complex carb gorging, maintained levels of this chemical similar to someone who was eating all the time everyday.

But noone should consider any form of 1 sided diet, if you truly want to lose weight and get healthy, it requires a multi-pronged attack of proper, balanced eating, as well as exercise. Anything that promises fast fat lose is either garbage, or dangerous to your long term health. It's also worth noting that most of these crash diets, that even on the small percentage that they work for, those people gain weight back rapidly as they return to prior habits.

reply to post by Solomons


Chemicals indeed. Biochemicals. Excessive carbohydrate consumption, 100+ grams a day, produces an hormonal imbalance.

-Dev

Interesting find! Yuo know..it seems to me, obiesity didnt show up till abuot 1990...that is when food companys like pringles, started using the additive OLESTRA rememebr that? It caused alot to have the runs and all, and they wnted to put it in as much of the food as they could, advertising it as a calorie free ingriedient,..so you could consume more nad not get fat, which is rediculous... any way you eat, overeating be it healhty or bad is not good at all.. obviously, excessive food will strecth your stamoch out, over yuor belt buckle, even if it was 6 or 7 bowls of salad! int ime that is. Its gunna reak havok on yuor bodys balance.
They need to stop with Monsantos and adding so much corn syrup, sodium and artificla additives to the food.

It's also worth noting that Insulin spikes are what cause our body to store fat. It's also no coincidence that diabetes has grown just as rapidly as obesity itself.

I just visited the states recently, and noticed that the "small" sodas from American restaurants were practically the same size as a large in Canadian establishments. The fact that Canada has far less obesity than the US should also be noted.

With upwards of 50 grams of sugar in a single drink thats an immediate insulin spike, and immediate fat storage. The obesity enigma is not that complicated, we are what we eat.

reply to post by boaby_phet

I will tell you first hand my moms side of the family has battled with obesity for their entire lives. My Nana was obese and she didnt over eat, in fact she ate very little and she was very active when she was able to move around before she passed. My mother walks daily and works out 3 days a week and eats fresh veggies she grows herself and is still obese. She doesnt eat fast food or junk food. Everything she eats is all natural and homemade. She gets down about it because no matter what she does she is still overweight but healthy. People always try to say she is obese because of how she eats and it really angers me because I know it is not true. I have seen my mom deal with this my entire life. The one thing she indulges in at times is her own homemade bread, which I love btw. So I dont think you can really say all obese people are obese because of over eating and not eating properly and lack of exercise because I can tell you of about 10 people who do eat right (and they dont follow any diet that is mainstream) and exercise and are still obese. I believe it to be genetic or some hormonal imbalance myself......sorry for the rant but this topic really gets to me esp when I have people I love who deal with this and the ridicule that goes along with it.

Edit: I just noticed your second post referring to Insulin so this post may seem redundant. I'm confused, are you saying you support Gary Taubes' research or not?

Originally posted by king9072
I don't want to get too far into this cause I seriously do not want to look up the sources, but I know they exist and the facts have been around for a decade now.

I'll do it for ya! I'll have soon enough...

When we are on low card, low fat diets, after a short period we certain chemical our body produces starts to get the impression that we are going through starvation. Reducing the amount of calories that are burned and feverishly attempts to store as much fat from what it intakes.

You do realize that what you're saying is that if you restrict calories, as much as one would have to in order to eat a low-fat, low-carb diet, long enough, the body compensates.

On these diets, this chemical dries up as we enter our "starvation" and the body quits shedding fat. But, the kicker is, is that you can restart the chemical by having a day of complex carb gorging. In fact, studies showed that people who stayed near starvation for several days, then had one day of complex carb gorging, maintained levels of this chemical similar to someone who was eating all the time everyday.

But noone should consider any form of 1 sided diet, if you truly want to lose weight and get healthy, it requires a multi-pronged attack of proper, balanced eating, as well as exercise. Anything that promises fast fat lose is either garbage, or dangerous to your long term health. It's also worth noting that most of these crash diets, that even on the small percentage that they work for, those people gain weight back rapidly as they return to prior habits.

This is not a crash diet. In fact, Taubes has stated multiple times that he wanted this book to strictly be research based and to present evidence of misinformation in medical science.

What you're saying is that no one can live on a restricted calorie diet for long and once it's over, the weight is put right back on, sometimes in greater quantities.

The chemical you're referring to is actually, I believe, receptors that form on the outside of fat cells during restricted calorie dieting that activate fat storage so that the weight is back to what the body thinks is normal. This is, unfortunately, a side-effect of thousands of years of evolution.

You can't store fat unless you have insulin, Type 1 diabetics know this. I'm assuming that when you say "complex carb" you're referring to a carbohydrate that digests and raises blood glucose levels slowly as not to spike insulin. Eating true complex carbs, like most vegetables and fruits, while staying away from cereal grains will have little effect on weight gain as they are not going to spike insulin.

Besides, the point that Gary Taubes is making is, don't eat so many carbs, eat fat and protein because there is no evidence to suggest that they are bad for you.

-Dev

[edit on 24-6-2009 by DevolutionEvolvd]

reply to post by mblahnikluver


easy tigera .... im not bashing anyone just joining the discusion.

many many people are overweight to to hormone imbalance, thyriod problems , slow metabolisim and so on, for ppl in that group sadly its very hard to lose it as they have not gained it through being unhealthy. ..

the point i was trying to make was that obecity is such a big problem nowadays due to all the junk that is put into food and stuff they inject animals with to fatten them up.

nice shade of purple btw !

There is research that points to a virus as the cause of some Obesity.
www.obesityvirus.com...
www.medicinenet.com...

In other people its a metabolic disorder caused by high levels of insulin.
Insulin resistance may be caused by carryover of drugs given cattle and other animals to fatten them for market.
it may also be carried over in milk products.
www.ingentaconnect.com...

Since i became disabled i have been on a less then 1000 calorie diet and less then 100 carbs a day. and i have only been able to keep from increasing my weight and have not lost any weight.

Being disabled i can not do more exercise to lose weight and the stupid medical schools don't teach anything about helping the disabled to lose weight. all the doctors tell you is to get more exercise.or eat less then don't believe you when you teel them how little you do eat. Then realise that you can not and give up.

reply to post by ANNED


The video explains what you have said, take a look, it's great.

This virus crap is new and still not the cause of the epidemic we see today. If obesity was caused by a virus, you would have expected obesity rates to be the same in the early part of the century. This is not observed.

-Dev

reply to post by boaby_phet


Sorry I didnt think you were bashing anyone. After I typed that I realized I was a bit harsh, sorry sensitive subject for me
I do see what you are saying. I have a friend who is obese and so are her kids and it is because of how they eat. Her 7 year old will eat McD's on a daily basis and down a pint of ice cream in minutes, I kid you not...I made dinner once for the kids and they refused to eat it. They wanted junk food! She gets upset cause they are obese and yet she doesnt want to do anything about it. I have told her time and time again what she should do and yet she doesnt listen. The ones I feel bad for are her kids, they dont know any better. They are doing what they have been taught.

sorry if I attacked you

Thanks...I assume you mean the pants..lol They are actually hot pink and electric blue zebra print jeans..lol

[edit on 6/24/2009 by mblahnikluver]

Interesting approach. I need to watch the video. Do we need to take artificial hormones to correct the imbalance?

I refuse to take anything artificial if I it can be avoided.

My sister is a nurse who works with overweight people who are having problems with their health due to their size. Over the years she has gradually gone from having sympathy with those attending the clinics to feeling like it's all a waste of time. She reckons its their lack of will power coupled with low self esteem. Often a patient will get on the scales and on discovering that they've gained weight will break down in tears and confess to eating 12 Bramley Apple Tarts (actual example) when faced with every day pressures such as bills, work schedules, etc. They find solice in food the way alcoholics do with strong spirits.
Of course some are just greedy and never know when to put the fork down and step away from the buffet table, while others just can't pass a rotisserie chicken without eating it, but some do seem to just rely too much on the good feelings that tasty food gives them. Unfortunately, most of that food is fried or full of saturated fat.

reply to post by SuperSecretSquirrel


No hormones need to be supplemented. This is an issue that can be resolved by eating the right foods. Insulin is the hormone being referenced and carbohydrate restriction is the solution to lower insulin levels and achieve equilibrium.

-Dev