Gary Taubes: 'Obesity isn’t a calorie problem, it’s a hormone problem'
The entirety of the comments seem to be either saying &quot;This guy is a genius and is 100% right&quot; or &quot;This guy is talking out of his backside&quot;.<p>The scientific consensus on weight loss is pretty clear: all forms of diets are similarly effective when you control for calorie intake. Low carb diets work, low fat diet work, intermittent fasting works, plain old fasting works, McDonald&#x27;s diet and Twinkie diets work. This is nothing new and calorie deficit is always the best predictor regardless of the diet type.<p>He seems to make the argument that high insulin causes fat to accumulate and as such reducing carbohydrate lowers insulin and increases weight loss, but I have yet to see any evidence that a high-calorie keto diet will result in weight loss.<p>The general consensus as to why keto works for some people is that it makes hunger management easier, although AFAIK there is no mechanism that has been clearly identified as being the main responsible, people who succeed on keto report higher levels of satiety after meals, but the same can be said of many other diets for people on which they work.<p>There&#x27;s a paragraph in there about keto being restrictive and he&#x27;s basically dismissing the claim with &quot;it feels less restrictive for people who feel less hungry on keto&quot;, which, fair enough but I don&#x27;t think that enough evidence to say &quot;promoting the keto diet will address the obesity problem&quot;. There may well be tons of people for whom keto <i>is</i> too restrictive, because they <i>won&#x27;t</i> feel less hungry after meals.<p>In the end, the best diet is the one you can stick to. For some people that&#x27;s keto, for most people it&#x27;s portion control, for others it may be intermittent fasting, for others it may be offsetting their food intake with exercise. In the end, I think it&#x27;s harmful to promote any specific diet as &quot;the cure to obesity&quot;, and it&#x27;s far better to encourage people to try out different diets rather than giving them the idea that &quot;if this diet won&#x27;t work, nothing will&quot;. Try different things out and see what works for you.