Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

When it doesn't work for someone, that means they were doing it wrong rather than that they were defying the laws of thermodynamics.

The useful thing to do at that point is to diagnose what they were doing wrong and how to correct for that instead of claiming they were defying the laws of physics.

No, that's definitely not related to what I'm talking about. I don't believe I've ever seen any good evidence related to the notion of "alkaline" and "acidic" foods. The top result for "dissociated diet" doesn't sound credible at all, to me. (Sure, it offers reasonable advice, like "eat lots of vegetables", but its reasoning is completely made up, as far as I can tell.)

And, the example meal plan on the same first result page is for a 1200 calorie diet! That's a massive caloric deficit for any adult; of course you'll lose weight if you follow it!

I was specifically talking about a study on sugar and fat and how they might trigger cravings and overconsumption, and possibly also cause metabolic effects that can cause weight gain and other problems, and not at all about alkaline/acidic food combining theories.

Small point first… eating the same amount but exercising more equals a caloric deficit in the same way that exercising the same amount but eating less does. I am not following your point about muscles specifically but I think we can let that go provided you agree that being in a caloric deficit needn’t mean you eat fewer calories. That is all I was trying to say regarding exercise.

Second point… confusion is not the same as controversy. Even though people might be confused how the mechanisms and pathways work doesn’t mean they are controversial. Hormones dictate weight gain and weight loss. See pregnancy or puberty or menopause. (You even mentioned Thyroidism.) It’s not controversial. Calling it pseudoscience seems over the top. See the green house effect (first argued in 1824) for an analog.

Third point… my claims pertain to the biology not to the marketing behind certain diets. I don’t believe that the atkins diet is ketogenic… nor do I think the Voedingscentrum is correct in saying the diet has a ‘varied and full-bodied eating pattern’, but I also don’t care. As you say… it is hype. But if your counter-examples have no explanatory power, then they are just as worthless. More on this below. In the very least don’t equate the hormone hypothesis with an endorsement for Atkins.

Fourth point… I concede that my rhetoric is not iron clad. Since science is a process and certainty is always a question… it is hard to ever win an argument about this stuff… as Katan points out doing double-blind studies is near impossible so that makes claims in nutrition science doubly fraught. Having admitted that… I stand by my statement that the hormone hypothesis is not controversial. Yes the lipid hypothesis had sway in American culture in the mid 20th century but evidence to back it up was never produced. If any controversy existed, I would say it lay with the lipid hypothesis not with the endocrine one.

As to the bonfides for sugar induced obesity I would point to Jean Anthelme Brilliat-Savarin (writing in 1825), Alfred Moore (writing in 1860), John Harvey (writing in 1861) , and William Banting (1863). Their accounts were accepted by medical schools in the US and the UK, with varied levels of understanding, through to the 20th century… where Thomas Cleave and John Yudkin were their antecedents. Does that make my 200 year claim iron clad? Not really but I think it is good enough for arguments sake.

Last point… you haven’t made a case for an alternative to the hormone hypothesis. The links you included don’t do it. Your examples don’t do it. The Katan article doesn’t say that low carb doesn’t work… let alone provide an alternative mechanism for losing weight. As I wrote above… caloric reduction is a associated with instances of losing weight… but it doesnt CAUSE you to lose weight. Hormones do.

> But why has obesity not been such a problem in the past, despite sugar being available?

Sugar, usually in the form of HFCS is added to almost any processed food these days, to make it more delicious and to make the food more profitable. HFCS is very, very cheap to produce. You're eating more sugar without perhaps even knowing you are. Low fat foods, introduced in the late 70's have the same amount of calories, but sugar was added to make the food more palatable.

Sugary items, like sodas, are also coming in larger portions, as well.

Sugars from fruit are less of a problem, as the fruit also contains fiber, which slows down the absorption of the fructose, and helps to not overload your liver.

Calories in the form of glucose are digested differently than fructose or HFCS - the latter two which are processed in your liver. You shouldn't worry about eating too much bread - you should be looking at if the bread contains added sugar.

Good video to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Sorry, IIRC it was called alimentación disociada in Spanish. I tried the probable translation, made a search and assumed the links were pointing to the same thing. I just browsed the book 20 years ago and it said nothing about ph, but about avoiding certain mixes of proteins, carbs and fats. The owner of the book said it had helped him a lot, but I didn't take much interest because that guy was not exactly thin and low-carb worked fine for me... actually it seemed like a softened keto diet, designed to make it a little funnier.