"Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
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"Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
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Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#2Hm, this also negates what I thought was Gary Taubes's most interesting point -- why is it that obese people eventually maintain their weight rather than keep gaining. But if the maintenance need increases with body weight, there is no need to postulate any interesting regulation mechanism: just eating a constant amount of food would do it.
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#3That doesn't counter his point at all. The difference between "obesity" and "maintaining weight" is still implausibly thin; what Gary was talking about in the first place was the delta in the top two lines, not the net total. He mentions that more obese people eventually do reach an energy balance, which obviously happens because they income and outflow eventually balance, which is a sign that he understands that. (Sixth paragraph, starts with "First, obese people tend to be weight stable for long periods of their life".) You didn't disprove his argument, you just reiterated bits of it, only with less comprehension and a math simulation disconnected from what actually happens (your simulation lacks the relative stability that people reach and simulates the clearly false scenario in which people become fatter without bound). ("relative stability" - there is a long-term weight gain over pretty much everybody's life but when people become obese they can do so much more rapidly than ~1lb/year)
(Personally I'd break it down to the individual meals since that's where satiety occurs and now we're talking about a delta of 3 or 4 calories. It's an absurd argument. Nothing is that precise without a feedback loop. And if a feedback loop is involved, the idea that the feedback loop is what is broken is hardly that odd an idea.)
I'm seeing a lot more people declare that Taubes is wrong or obviously a crank that there are people actually demonstrating a comprehension of his points, which I tend to consider a prerequisite for an actually-effective "debunking". Maybe he's wrong, but it's not because of people arguing against points he's not even making while blatently missing the ones he is.
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#4That doesn't counter his point at all. The difference between "obesity" and "maintaining weight" is still implausibly thin; what Gary was talking about in the first place was the delta in the top two lines, not the net total. He mentions that more obese people eventually do reach an energy balance, which obviously happens because they income and outflow eventually balance, which is a sign that he understands that. (S…
(your simulation lacks the stability that people reach and simulates the clearly false scenario in which people become fatter without bound)
True. All I did was graph the exact scenario Taubes himself described. If it is unrealistic, take it up with him.
The only difference is that I didn't "forget" to mention the 7 strips of bacon the obese person consumes in excess of the thin person.
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#5Rearranging the Harris-Benedict Equation the author uses, and holding height, exercise and calorie intake constant, you get an expected increase in weight of a bit over a pound a year -- so just "eating like you're 30" alone would explain 20 of the 40 extra pounds the 50 years old in the original article is carrying...
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#6This is a brilliant graph, but I don't think you are reading Taubes' article correctly. He is not offering "straightforward calculations", rather he is setting up a "straw man" ("Aunt Sally") which he feels represents the "almost incomprehensibly naïve and wrong-headed" conventional wisdom. Like you, Taubes does not believe that 20 calories a day is a good way to represent the difference between an obese and non-obese individual.
While it's obvious from the response here on HN that he fails to make this clear, he's setting up a contrafactual argument. He's lamenting that even the best science writers we have (like Jonah Lehrer) seem to offer only simplistic truisms like the 20 calories myth. You point out (correctly) that 20 calories is misleading by using a brilliant graph. Taubes attempts (and apparently fails) to bring it down with logic and rhetoric.
Now, it's true that Taubes wouldn't fully agree with your graph. He believes that 'calories' themselves are a faulty way of viewing the world, and that the composition of the food matters more than the calculated calories. He believes it matters whether that 450 additional calories are corn syrup or lean steak. But at base, you are not disagreeing with him, and your (wonderful and to the point) graph is not contradicting anything he's saying.
I'm just finding it now, but the blog post refers to a chapter in his book: http://books.google.com/books?id=Pm9ZcFYtLZ4C&pg=PT68... Perhaps that will be a clearer exposition of his beliefs?
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#7I don't understand how author reasons that in his graph the "calories/day" for fat guy will be increasing with age, and for "lean" guy they will be decreasing.
OK, so if metabolic rate is slowing with age, I would guess the "fat" guy's graph would not be so steep, or actually would be a level line (eating the same amounts of food), while for "lean" guy the line will be somewhat downward sloping (eating less the older he gets).
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#8That doesn't counter his point at all. The difference between "obesity" and "maintaining weight" is still implausibly thin; what Gary was talking about in the first place was the delta in the top two lines, not the net total. He mentions that more obese people eventually do reach an energy balance, which obviously happens because they income and outflow eventually balance, which is a sign that he understands that. (S…
Again, this is not a scientific phenomenon, it's a social phenomenon. If this was about science it would be over and done. You read his article and find it correct, I read his article and find it scientifically false. Taubes gets paid to write whatever he thinks people will latch on to. Unfortunately I don't get paid to overcome what he's obviously found to be powerful social hooks in people.
Taubes didn't sit in his study reading a "century's worth of literature" over the last decade and somehow unravel all the conventional wisdom of science with his theorizing. My personal theory, after reading his work, is that he spent much of that decade coming up with ideas to sell books. He hasn't made any advances in science. He's another Tim Ferriss/Seth Godin/Malcolm Gladwell, and if this case is anything like the past few, he'll enjoy some intellectual success and then two years later many of the slowpokes will recognize that what he's selling is enticing but not really correct.
I'm not sure what the social hooks are. Someone else suggested that smart fat people are looking for alternative explanations like in any other diet fad. I don't know if that's true, but that would explain a lot. Certainly some people are defending him purely on intellectual grounds as another intellectual defying authority, they want him to succeed. I'm glad you enjoy reading him, but, basically, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#9This is a brilliant graph, but I don't think you are reading Taubes' article correctly. He is not offering "straightforward calculations", rather he is setting up a "straw man" ("Aunt Sally") which he feels represents the "almost incomprehensibly naïve and wrong-headed" conventional wisdom. Like you, Taubes does not believe that 20 calories a day is a good way to represent the difference between an obese and non-obes…
I've heard this one before. "Taubes's argument is more complex than that. You need to spend more hours studying those pages, and read books x, y, and z." It's the same argument they give in college English classes for deconstructionism and all that other nonsense.
Taubes is a journalist. The people on HN are several standard deviations ahead of his audience. If he's doing his job shouldn't we all be able to understand him without any trouble? Here's a simpler argument: Taubes is wrong, and that's where the problem is.
Re: "Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room
#10That doesn't counter his point at all. The difference between "obesity" and "maintaining weight" is still implausibly thin; what Gary was talking about in the first place was the delta in the top two lines, not the net total. He mentions that more obese people eventually do reach an energy balance, which obviously happens because they income and outflow eventually balance, which is a sign that he understands that. (S…
(your simulation lacks the stability that people reach and simulates the clearly false scenario in which people become fatter without bound) True. All I did was graph the exact scenario Taubes himself described. If it is unrealistic, take it up with him. The only difference is that I didn't "forget" to mention the 7 strips of bacon the obese person consumes in excess of the thin person.
What you appear to be aggressively declining to understand, despite two prior commenters clearly explaining it--including the one that you're responding to here--is that Taubes does not argue that 20 extra calories a day makes a person fat. He argues the precise opposite, in fact, at great length and in some detail.