Gary Taubes, The Diet Delusion May 20, 2010

For the past century, the advice to the overweight and obese has remained remarkably consistent: consume fewer calories than you expend and you will lose weight. This prescription seems logical on the surface. The only problem is, it doesn't seem to work.

There is considerable evidence that the obesity epidemic is caused by a hormonal phenomenon, specifically by eating refined carbohydrates, starches and sugars, all of which prompt excessive insulin secretion. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated, fat accumulates in our body tissue; when they fall, fat is released and we use it for fuel. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat; by driving us to accumulate fat, they increase hunger and decrease the energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity. In short, obesity is caused not by overeating or sedentary behavior, but by hormonal malfunctioning triggered by the consumption of particular types of carbohydrate-containing foods. We over-eat because we are being driven by carbohydrates and insulin to get fat; we don't get fat because we over-eat.

Obesity researchers, nutritionists and health authorities have refused to contemplate this scenario, partly because it would imply that diet-book doctors advocating carbohydrate-restricted diets - Robert Atkins et al - were right all along. Instead, these alleged experts and guardians of our health have wasted a good part of a century on research based on a logical misstep, watching their compatriots grow ever fatter while blaming everyone but themselves. In the process, they have created one more field of clinical medicine that functions more like a religion than a science, with a veneer of science serving only as window dressing for entrenched business interests. It is time to put science, not commercial interests, back in charge in all areas of medicine.

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