You’re not going to win a debate against Gary Taubes unless you can scream louder than he can. I don’t recommend you watch this video, unless you can stomach his droning on and on, and not letting Dr. Christopher Gardner speak. Apparently, he needs to get in every word during the hour debate plus Q&A to say the following (“carbs are bad”):

1. Yes, he understands that some change in the food environment is responsible for the obesity epidemic of the last 30 years.
2. But it’s not over-eating, or fatty super-sized fast food, because the Pima Indians in 1902 got fat on sugar and refined grains (not fast food).
3. So, it must be the sugar and refined grains that made us fat.
4. This is because they raise insulin levels, which makes us accumulate fat.

He ignores/discounts any other mechanisms of food addiction like the Pleasure Trap or the power of food reward like Salt, Sugar, and Fat. Or the additional hundreds of calories/day we’re consuming since the 80’s. All the researchers have it wrong (Occam’s Razor tells him so), or had poorly designed experiments. It’s all about insulin. There’s no other interactions, or feedback loops in the regulation of appetite and body fat. No one has ever made this simple connection before.

Finally, incredibly, he started to agree with Stanford’s Dr. Gardner that if everyone ate only whole foods, leafy green vegetables, whole grains, fruits, etc., the country would be lean. (What?! He’s making sense?!) But then he caught himself, and hastily added that we’re probably too far down the obesity road, and we’d all probably have to adopt ketogenic diets first. What a maroon dillettante fixed-idea nut.