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ChrisHallquist comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 2: Atkins Redux - Less Wrong
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Taken literally, this is false. Children voraciously isn't literally an epiphenomenon of their growth. If it were, children would still grow regardless of how little they eat. But in fact, not eating enough when you're a kid stunts your growth.
Of course, one way to defend Taubes here is to assume a lot of his rhetoric isn't meant to be taken literally. But the farther you go in that direction, the less he ends up disagreeing with mainstream nutrition, and the harder it is to make sense of the things he says about how awful mainstream nutrition science is supposed to be.
Where did "epiphenomenon" come from? I think you're interpreting him far too uncharitably; he's not saying "how much a child eats has no impact on their growth," and indeed he's saying the opposite. He's saying that the causal chain starts with the growth hormone, which influences how much they eat, and then the hormone and how much they eat influence how much taller they grow. (And he's unclear in the first sentence, but I'm pretty sure he does mean taller, not just larger.)
It was Jack who first used the word "epiphenomenal" upthread.
So it is; I agree with you that epiphenomenon is not a sensible description of the impact of eating on growth, and I disagree with Jack; I don't think that's a good description of Taubes's passage there.
It is literally true. Notice the tense. It's not an effect of their growth it's an effect of their being something that is growing -- having a hormonal system that is aligned toward increasing size.
Are you saying that children would grow eating nothing? If not, what's with the word games?
Cells won't grow from nothing unless they're made of nothing.