&gt; but I&#x27;ve yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different.<p>The whole point of the article here is that there is a line of research which has established, both in non-human models and human experiments, that &quot;maintenance level calories&quot; (especially when considering the content of food that enters the mouth, rather than what gets absorbed) are not a constant across different gut biomes.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ajcn.nutrition.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;94&#x2F;1&#x2F;58.full" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ajcn.nutrition.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;94&#x2F;1&#x2F;58.full</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;profile&#x2F;Peter_Turnbaugh&#x2F;publication&#x2F;6617716_An_obesity-associated_gut_microbiome_with_increased_capacity_for_energy_harvest&#x2F;links&#x2F;00b7d51adf064f0dc0000000.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;profile&#x2F;Peter_Turnbaugh&#x2F;publicat...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC3601187&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC3601187&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC3974587&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC3974587&#x2F;</a>