"Faced with low-fat processed foods that taste like cardboard, the manufacturers try to improve the taste with things like high-fructose corn syrup and guess what happens? In the mid-1980s the incidence of obesity shows a sudden, dramatic increase, doubling from 15% to 30% over the next two decades."
Here's where we can all agree. But, I don't think the "low-fat" foods are the sole culprit. I think all of our processed foods are the culprit. The choices of what to eat are not just "low fat" processed foods or high animal protein fatty foods. We have other options; there's a whole produce section in the grocery and damned near everything in it is healthier for you than a microwaved "low fat" dinner. The processed foods, I believe, are contributing mightily to the weight problem in our society. If you go to the store and buy a bunch of "low carb" processed foods, you'll still get fat, and feel bad.
If people lose weight on Atkins, that is a net positive for their health. Heart disease or complications from diabetes is probably what's going to kill a really fat person. So, if they remove weight as a contributing factor in those problems, they might live past the average lifespan of someone who dies of those diseases. However, there is quite a bit of evidence that diets very high in animal proteins and fats contribute to higher incidence of many kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease.
The thing is, I suspect you and I agree about what people should eat a lot more than we disagree. My problem is with picking one specific macronutrient and calling it the cause of all of our troubles. Because Taubes recommends eating wholes foods most of the time, I think following his recommendations are better for you than Weight Watchers or similar processed food-based diets. But, the science still seems to indicate that there are long-term health consequences to eating large amounts of animal protein and animal fats. I know Taubes has done a lot of hand-waving about the China Study, and the book itself probably does deserve some of the thrashing he gave it; but the actual study is one of the largest and most impressive studies of human diet ever undertaken. I don't think you can simply ignore all that data, and the healthiest populations did generally have quite low intake of animal proteins.
All I'm saying is that the human body is among the most complex systems we study (there are billions of moving parts in the bacterial flora in our digestive system, we have barely a clue how any of that works), and Taubes sometimes has hunches based on correlation that are probably wrong.
"Watch Robert Lustig's UCSF talk entitled "Sugar: The Bitter Truth"[2] He'll go into plenty of detail on the biochemistry involved."
We can both agree on the danger of sugar, as well. Humans have just gotten really good at making foods that have almost no nutrition and loads of energy, and sugar helps. Lustig's treatise is that too much sugar and not enough fiber are key to some of our problems, which doesn't have much overlap with recommending a high protein/high fat diet (his first slide is "What do the Atkins diet and Japanese diet have in common?").
But, if you're including this link as evidence that we understand insulin, I would mention dairy. Dairy causes a tremendous insulinemic response, several times what it's glycemic index indicates it should. And yet, numerous studies have shown that eating dairy can help with weight loss. There are many other areas where insulin doesn't behave in a simplistic way; we don't actually know what insulin does in many circumstances.
One more point about Lustig's video. In the graph of fat intake vs. obesity, he leaves out one very important line: Total caloric intake. I think that's an important omission.
"You made the bizarre claim that Americans have been eating more fat and that the Atkins diet is a disaster, both without any supporting evidence."
Here's where we can all agree. But, I don't think the "low-fat" foods are the sole culprit. I think all of our processed foods are the culprit. The choices of what to eat are not just "low fat" processed foods or high animal protein fatty foods. We have other options; there's a whole produce section in the grocery and damned near everything in it is healthier for you than a microwaved "low fat" dinner. The processed foods, I believe, are contributing mightily to the weight problem in our society. If you go to the store and buy a bunch of "low carb" processed foods, you'll still get fat, and feel bad.
If people lose weight on Atkins, that is a net positive for their health. Heart disease or complications from diabetes is probably what's going to kill a really fat person. So, if they remove weight as a contributing factor in those problems, they might live past the average lifespan of someone who dies of those diseases. However, there is quite a bit of evidence that diets very high in animal proteins and fats contribute to higher incidence of many kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease.
The thing is, I suspect you and I agree about what people should eat a lot more than we disagree. My problem is with picking one specific macronutrient and calling it the cause of all of our troubles. Because Taubes recommends eating wholes foods most of the time, I think following his recommendations are better for you than Weight Watchers or similar processed food-based diets. But, the science still seems to indicate that there are long-term health consequences to eating large amounts of animal protein and animal fats. I know Taubes has done a lot of hand-waving about the China Study, and the book itself probably does deserve some of the thrashing he gave it; but the actual study is one of the largest and most impressive studies of human diet ever undertaken. I don't think you can simply ignore all that data, and the healthiest populations did generally have quite low intake of animal proteins.
All I'm saying is that the human body is among the most complex systems we study (there are billions of moving parts in the bacterial flora in our digestive system, we have barely a clue how any of that works), and Taubes sometimes has hunches based on correlation that are probably wrong.
"Watch Robert Lustig's UCSF talk entitled "Sugar: The Bitter Truth"[2] He'll go into plenty of detail on the biochemistry involved."
We can both agree on the danger of sugar, as well. Humans have just gotten really good at making foods that have almost no nutrition and loads of energy, and sugar helps. Lustig's treatise is that too much sugar and not enough fiber are key to some of our problems, which doesn't have much overlap with recommending a high protein/high fat diet (his first slide is "What do the Atkins diet and Japanese diet have in common?").
But, if you're including this link as evidence that we understand insulin, I would mention dairy. Dairy causes a tremendous insulinemic response, several times what it's glycemic index indicates it should. And yet, numerous studies have shown that eating dairy can help with weight loss. There are many other areas where insulin doesn't behave in a simplistic way; we don't actually know what insulin does in many circumstances.
One more point about Lustig's video. In the graph of fat intake vs. obesity, he leaves out one very important line: Total caloric intake. I think that's an important omission.
"You made the bizarre claim that Americans have been eating more fat and that the Atkins diet is a disaster, both without any supporting evidence."
Caloric intake is up, as is total fat intake. Only percentage of fat is down, and only by some measures. (http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/DEC2002/frvo...)