In a recent interview on Jimmy Moore’s Livin La Vida Low-Carb Podcast #1223, Gary Taubes talks about his (in)famous metabolic ward study with Kevin Hall, the state of his non-profit foundation NuSI, and it’s future outlook.
It’s an interesting look into Gary Taubes’ mind, as he’s fairly unguarded in this discussion. For whatever reason, from his perspective:
- “To me, the nutrition obesity research community is effectively a noise generating machine.” (As opposed to generating “signal”, i.e., meaningful results.) [21:35]
- “I would say virtually everything [went wrong with the Hall study].” [23:30]
- “They let a $4.5M study be run by someone who […] had done maybe one clinical research experiment in his life. So, I admire Kevin, and I think he’s an impressive guy. But from my perspective he didn’t have the experience that we were looking for. And it wasn’t they way we had hoped it’d turn out.” [23:45]
- “In this field when researchers publish that contrary to the belief system of the authorities, the authorities tend to ignore it. So, that’s why you [Jimmy Moore] and I can say things like we believe, things absolutely for certain, and everyone we know believes them, and yet it’s considered quackery by the mainstream community, which doesn’t see the evidence we see.” [24:20]
- He doesn’t remember being involved in the design of the study’s diets. [25:20]
- 8 oz of sugary beverages every-other-day in the high-carb, 20% sugar diet was enough of a reduction to fix the Standard American Diet (SAD), so it was too healthy as the control diet. [26:45]
- Because energy balance wasn’t achieved in the run-in diet (as per study design), the experiment was a failure, and the results can’t be interpreted as planned. [29:45]
- There was a lot of fighting and disfunction between the investigators and NuSI, where Taubes believed he was more of the theorist, and that the investigators were more of the experimentalists/empiricists. [15:20]
Gary Taubes doesn’t drive me crazy anymore, as I now understand his perspective, so what he said doesn’t bother me. (I know he can’t see any evidence opposing his carb-insulin hypothesis and other low-carb beliefs.) However, he should be careful to not just throw around blame at everyone and excuses for everything, otherwise Occam’s Razor may suggest who’s more likely to be right. If it was obvious and simply that carbs and insulin, not calories, drove weight gain, it’d have been seen a long time ago. No tilting at windmills required.
Two Pounds of Starch A Day 
There is a podcast of an interview with Kevin Hall where he answers some of those comments from GT about his study. It is worth watching. http://sigmanutrition.com/episode165/
Yes, that’s the reasonable scientific discussion of the matter. The science is way beyond obvious, and doesn’t interest me nearly as much as GT’s thinking, and how he ostensibly goes about trying to “fix” all of nutritional science. All his tilting at windmills seems somewhat genuine, and not only motivated by money. Which still doesn’t reflect well on him, or his role in the field.
This performance was infuriating after listening to Hall’s version of events on the Sigma Nutrition podcast first.
Well, if you accept the “he’s deluded” explanation of things, it’s a lot less stressful to listen to. What you hear are a lot more clues about his ego, the filter he uses to shape reality, and his total commitment to his particular view of the world.
Unfathomable.
The only this is fiasco shows–and strikingly so–are: a) the health knowledge and literacy of the public and the media are much poorer than suspected b) the seeds of mass delusion, given the right soap box, are easy to sow. Unfortunately, the dual epidemics of diabetes and obesity have now caused a 4-year success in lowering cardiovascular mortality to reverse. This will most certainly lead to rationing of stents in the years to come, or the newer drugs to lower cholesterol. Even with all the drugs and stents for everyone, this problem will progress, because the cause of the illness worsens as I write this.
Typo corrections: The things this fiasco shows… and it is 40-year success, not 4-year.
Apologies
“If it was obvious and simply that carbs and insulin, not calories, drove weight gain, it’d have been seen a long time ago. No tilting at windmills required.” This statement is confusing, the very first diet created by William Bant, was a low carb diet, so to was most of the dietary and nutrition advice coming from Europe until World War 2. It wasn’t until the 1960’s came along that low fat became a nutrition plan. So you’re correct, the majority of the health community did see low carbs as the way to go for most of the time. Before Low Fat became a craze, Dr. Atkins came out with his low carb diet as well. So it’s really confusing as to what you’re saying when you suggest that this would’ve been seen awhile ago. His entire argument is that it has, and the last 50 years of science has been ignoring it.