Eugine_Nier comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 4: What Causes Obesity? - Less Wrong

7 Post author: ChrisHallquist 31 December 2013 10:04PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 30 December 2013 10:12:48PM -2 points [-]

the mainstream view is that people gain weight when they consume more calories than they burn, but both calorie intake and calorie expenditure are regulated by complicated mechanisms we don't fully understand yet.

How does this square with starches occupying the bottom of the pyramid?

Yet Taubes goes on at great length about how obesity has other causes beyond simple calorie math as if this were somehow a refutation of mainstream nutrition science. So I'm going to provide a series of quotes from relevant sources to show that the experts are perfectly aware of that fact. All of the following sources are ones Taubes cites as examples of how absurd the views of mainstream nutrition experts supposedly are:

(...)

What you're doing strikes me as analogous to defending someone who gave bad financial advise by pointing to the "past performance is no guarantee of future results" disclaimer at the bottom of the reports. The meaningful content of these reports is the advise they give, not the COA disclaimer they attach to them.

Comment author: Randy_M 02 January 2014 03:08:21PM 3 points [-]

How does this square with starches occupying the bottom of the pyramid?

Food pyramid wasn't intended to be about obesity; ironically, obesity wasn't a national concern when the advice was formulated.

Comment author: Nornagest 30 December 2013 10:27:38PM *  2 points [-]

How does this square with starches occupying the bottom of the pyramid?

The short version, if I recall correctly, is that starchy foods were seen as the least bad option: fats are more calorie-dense than carbohydrates, and meat and eggs were being discouraged for other reasons. I'm not sure why starchy foods were being recommended over fruits and vegetables, which are strictly better by the same standards, but the simplest answer is probably that they were already dietary staples and the people designing the guide wanted to rock the boat as little as possible.

It's also worth mentioning that the food pyramid, and other nutritional advice contemporary with it, wasn't exclusively aimed at obesity (which at the time was rising, but wasn't anywhere close to the public health issue it is now). Managing cholesterol was hugely trendy in the Eighties, for example.

Not to get too apologetic for the advice of that era, which I view as ineffective at best. But it wasn't that inconsistent.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 30 December 2013 10:34:35PM *  -2 points [-]

Not to get too apologetic for the advice of that era, which I view as ineffective at best. But it wasn't that inconsistent.

I didn't say it was inconsistent, I said that Chris's summary of it was grossly inaccurate.

Comment author: EHeller 30 December 2013 11:34:56PM 0 points [-]

How does this square with starches occupying the bottom of the pyramid?

How does it not? You've said almost this exact sentence elsewhere, could you spell out your point by more than implication.

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