What Really Makes Us Fat (By GARY TAUBES)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really-makes-us-fat.html?smid=pl-share
Again the same story by Gary Taubes. I admire him for his efforts to tell this story again and again, against all "science" about the obesity epidemic and knowledge in the field of nutrition. Its not easy to fight this dogma that exist about food and calories: "a calorie is a calorie". This purely thermodynamical view of a human body, and its calories hose-holding, is an enormous scientific simplification of something very complex. "a calorie is a calorie" is an giant jump to conclusions and it draws a straight line between cause (eating) and result (fat), and is a theory that simplifies our human bodies to a black box with an intake of calories (eating), energy capacity (fat) , an expenditure (burning of calories) and not to forget an end-of-pipe solution (...). What seems to have happened is that, in some point in our scientific progress, oversimplification took place and complex medical questions were handled just like your physics/thermodynamics exam questions in high school: You read the question and then make a small drawing with a box (the system), and some arrows (inputs and outputs). Worked great as long as we were in the field of physics and simplifications where clearly explained and justified. You could just "assume" some variables constant and/or others limited or whatever was needed to make the puzzle solvable.
Gary Taubes is not a scientist but just a journalist telling us the obvious facts that are out there and where out there all along ever since medical science started to look at the problem of obesity. His first book "Good calories, bad calories" was a hell of a read, citing almost every medical trail on nutrition and diets in scientific history. The red line in this book was "bad science" took over since the 1970ies and the birth of a few dogmas that took place "a calorie is a calorie" and also fat being the cause of heart diseases and so on... He (G. Taubes) exaggerates (not a little) in his effort to be complete and cite every important study or medical trail he found, but then again, it gives this book the right weight to support the main argument: Bad science and oversimplification of the problem. Also the book tries to push forward the theory about carbohydrates and sugars, triggering too much insulin secretion. Insulin levels rise and cells become insulin resistant, causing even higher levels. This hormone (insulin) , besides loading energy into cells, is also responsible for the piling up of energy in our fat cells. Too much carbohydrates and sugers means rising levels of insulin, more insulin resistance in our cells and therefore even more insulin secretion... and so on.. adding up to complex "hormonal" mechanism.
Seems to me there is still no consensus on what is "scientifically" proven to be the right theory, but oversimplification and human bodies that are equivalents of machines aren't helping us to find it. I like this author and his efforts, he strives for good science and for decent arguments. He doesn't need to be right in the end about everything he writes, just "right" enough so people wake up!
(interesting keynote by Gary Taubes : http://videomedia2.swedish.org/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=cd8c7aa15bc94a0486f4ee9b66ef8f8f )
Again the same story by Gary Taubes. I admire him for his efforts to tell this story again and again, against all "science" about the obesity epidemic and knowledge in the field of nutrition. Its not easy to fight this dogma that exist about food and calories: "a calorie is a calorie". This purely thermodynamical view of a human body, and its calories hose-holding, is an enormous scientific simplification of something very complex. "a calorie is a calorie" is an giant jump to conclusions and it draws a straight line between cause (eating) and result (fat), and is a theory that simplifies our human bodies to a black box with an intake of calories (eating), energy capacity (fat) , an expenditure (burning of calories) and not to forget an end-of-pipe solution (...). What seems to have happened is that, in some point in our scientific progress, oversimplification took place and complex medical questions were handled just like your physics/thermodynamics exam questions in high school: You read the question and then make a small drawing with a box (the system), and some arrows (inputs and outputs). Worked great as long as we were in the field of physics and simplifications where clearly explained and justified. You could just "assume" some variables constant and/or others limited or whatever was needed to make the puzzle solvable.
Gary Taubes is not a scientist but just a journalist telling us the obvious facts that are out there and where out there all along ever since medical science started to look at the problem of obesity. His first book "Good calories, bad calories" was a hell of a read, citing almost every medical trail on nutrition and diets in scientific history. The red line in this book was "bad science" took over since the 1970ies and the birth of a few dogmas that took place "a calorie is a calorie" and also fat being the cause of heart diseases and so on... He (G. Taubes) exaggerates (not a little) in his effort to be complete and cite every important study or medical trail he found, but then again, it gives this book the right weight to support the main argument: Bad science and oversimplification of the problem. Also the book tries to push forward the theory about carbohydrates and sugars, triggering too much insulin secretion. Insulin levels rise and cells become insulin resistant, causing even higher levels. This hormone (insulin) , besides loading energy into cells, is also responsible for the piling up of energy in our fat cells. Too much carbohydrates and sugers means rising levels of insulin, more insulin resistance in our cells and therefore even more insulin secretion... and so on.. adding up to complex "hormonal" mechanism.
Seems to me there is still no consensus on what is "scientifically" proven to be the right theory, but oversimplification and human bodies that are equivalents of machines aren't helping us to find it. I like this author and his efforts, he strives for good science and for decent arguments. He doesn't need to be right in the end about everything he writes, just "right" enough so people wake up!
(interesting keynote by Gary Taubes : http://videomedia2.swedish.org/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=cd8c7aa15bc94a0486f4ee9b66ef8f8f )