
Complete Notes to Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes | Higher Thought - pelle
http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-bad-calories/
======
kowen
Taubes' take on the caloric balance equation (thermodynamic law) is
fascinating.

 _Change in energy stores = Energy intake – Energy expenditure_

According to my biochemistry professor in college, this had one - and only one
- interpretation: The change in energy stores is controlled by energy intake
and energy expenditure. The right side of the equation controls the left side
of the equation. Also, there was an implied "just eat less and exercise more"
(that energy intake and expenditure are independent variables).

But Taubes suggests that the causation could be reversed, and that energy
intake and expenditure are dependent variables. In other words, a metabolic
change could cause a change in energy stores, and energy intake and
expenditure would change to match.

That (amazingly!) translates to: if you are losing weight you are likely to be
less hungry and likely to have more energy. Or perhaps, if your metabolic
state is such that you are losing weight, your hunger will adjust to match
your activity level. Or even, if you're burning fat, you will only eat to make
up for what you aren't getting from stored fuel.

It makes sense to think that if your energy stores are releasing fuel into the
blood stream you would be less hungry (I'm assuming that hunger signals are a
function of available fuel to some extent).

Naturally, we eat for nutrition as well as fuel, so I suppose it can't all be
broken into thermodynamics, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it!

~~~
nova
Just write the equation like this:

 _Energy intake - Energy expenditure - Change in energy stores = 0_

There. Just f(x,y,z)=0. That's what the first law really says. There is no
causality implied, it just a first integral of the "motion" of metabolism that
the body, naturally, has to follow.

It does NOT say what variables are free to independently modify. It's just a
relation the three of them have to obey.

~~~
jessep
I'm confused by the application of this law to food. My reason: excrement.

You put some mass that contains chemical energy into your body. Then that mass
comes out of your body, minus SOME of the chemical energy. How much of it is
extracted? What determines this? I have no idea. That said, I think it is
funny to treat it as if the only way to get rid of energy is expenditure. How
about:

Energy intake - Energy Ependiture - Energy still in food when it comes out the
other end = Change in energy stores

~~~
nova
Yes you can decompose it further but it doesn't matter. Just consider that
"energy intake" is the energy actually absorbed by your body, not what you put
in your mouth. (Try eating grass. It has energy, but we can't use it)

My point is that a lot of people misinterpret conservation of energy assigning
it a direction of causality it doesn't have. It's a constraint between
variables (not an assignation as in programming languages) which are under
complex feedback control systems in the body, and that's why the kind of
calories you eat (fats vs carbohydrates) DOES matter, you don't eat abstract
pure energy but as you say mass with chemical energy that has to be
metabolized.

That's why starvation diets (just counting theoretical calories, which are
numbers obtained in laboratories, dismissing the type of macronutrient) often
fails in the long term and leave serious damage. The book talks long about
this.

~~~
jessep
Right. I didn't mean to take away from your point at all, which I do think is
fascinating.

I've just noticed that people generally do equate "energy intake" with
calories that go into your mouth, and find that interesting.

------
lionhearted
Previously, I never believed the notion that calories in/calories out was
wrong - it always seemed too much like "feel good science" to me. Y'know,
where a diet says it's not your fault that you're overweight, it's just
because of the darn environment around you, so feel good about yourself, etc,
etc.

I think I was mistaken.

There was a thread on here with a video that was just incredibly insightful
and it was a big part of what convinced me. I'm starting to rethink my own
nutrition and diet.

"Sugar: The Bitter Truth", +132 points, 86 comments
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980>

Takes a while to watch the video, but it was _very_ worthwhile for me and
highly recommended.

~~~
JulianMorrison
It's obviously right by conservation of energy, but it's equivocating the word
"in". Food is "in" when you eat it, but calories are "in" when they're
digested and metabolized - that's several steps further down the pipeline.

~~~
billjings
That's part of the issue. Eating slower has been suggested to help losing
weight for that reason - it gives your satiety response time to kick in.

The issue with calories in minus calories out is not equivocating the word
"in", though. It is that it doesn't provide a useful model of how weight gain
works. "Calories in" and "Calories out" are not independent variables, they
are managed by the body's various feedback systems. Changing one of them will
almost always change the other. Going for a run will make you hungrier, and
undereating will lower your energy level and probably make you hungrier as
well.

Based on a lecture of his I've seen, I'm convinced that his major hypothesis
is God's own truth - that "calories in - calories out" is not a useful model
for controlling weight, and that the regulatory systems of the body are what
you have to get at to have a real effect on body weight. I am sold on the idea
that diet is one way to get at those systems effectively. I'm eager to read
his book to find out more about the case he's making.

~~~
Psyonic
Honestly, you might just want to stick with the notes. The book is full of
good information, don't get me wrong, but it's a tough read. It's dense and
slow-going, but thorough. These notes contain everything you practically need
to know, so unless you're really interested in understanding it in depth, the
notes will probably do.

------
karzeem
Sorry for the threadjacking, but any HNers doing caloric restriction? I'm at a
normal weight, but a checkup a few months ago revealed a personal-worst blood
pressure of 128/75, so I've been on CRON since then. Latest blood pressure is
110/65.

~~~
unexpected
I lost almost 85 lbs with a combination of calorie-restriction + low carb.

~~~
GFischer
I'm on a diet right now (calorie restriction + low carb, too), and I lost 22
pounds (10 kg) so far (goal is losing 40 pounds/18 kg overall).

------
nickpp
Please ignore my opinion, I only briefly read the notes and I am an ignoramus
in nutrition.

After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet:
less carbs lots of fat.

No thanks. Read a little Dr. Fuhrman for a different approach to nutrition:
more nutrients, less calories. Greens in other words. More carbs though.

Who's right?

~~~
nova
_After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet_

Taubes' book is not a diet book, it's a thick book on all the things that are
wrong on modern research on nutrition. It explains why the problem is not fats
(nor greens), but refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour.

Very worth your time, really.

~~~
lacrossegm
American obsesity can correlated to eating too much salt, sugar and fat.

Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant
portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda,
coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring,
preservatives, etc.)

If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot
less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish
and lean meat.

~~~
jerf
Look, you just spouted the dietary dogma in the face of a book that has
_dozens upon dozens_ of references to scientific literature. The only thing
stopping me saying "hundreds" is I'm not quite sure if it gets up to 200,
though I bet it does. (I don't have it in front of me to check.) Even if
you're completely right (which I do not believe despite being raised on that
theory), simply re-spouting it is not an adequate response to this book.

That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch
up to modern science. Salt especially; current science _strongly_ indicates
that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already
have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that
it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from
Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science.

Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the
face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't
give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video
lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike
reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy
to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty
good.

~~~
Psyonic
The funny thing is that Taubes book basically recommends you do away with
those things anyway: who likes burgers without the bun? fries are out, shakes
are out, tacos without the shell? no thanks, etc, etc.

Where he differs, he has a lot more science to back it up.

~~~
lacrossegm
I'm not so sure about the science.

This quote is taken from the wiki article on Gary Taubes

"Although Taubes has no formal training in nutrition or medicine, his book was
praised as "raising interesting and valuable points" by Dr. Andrew Weil, while
Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Jillian Michaels who appeared on the same program
disagreed with Taubes on many questions. [6]"

I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an
inefficient tool for weight loss.

Taubes is against refined carbs (OK, that does make sense) but is a bit of a
nutter on other causes and solutions to obesity.

~~~
nova
_I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an
inefficient tool for weight loss._

The science of the book is sound. And he is right about exercise: it's good
for fitness (as in muscle) and other health reasons, but for weight loss is
almost useless by itself. The reason is insulin, which signal the body to
store, not use, energy.

Of course you could calorie-count people on a high carb diet and whip them to
exercise and they will probably lose weight. But you will also destroy their
health and they will regain all of its former weight (and then some) later.
This is documented and is all in the book too.

------
jules
If this is true then why are the vegetarians I know are lean and the people
who eat a lot of meat are not?

~~~
pelle
The issue is not if you eat a lot of meat or not, it is if you eat a lot of
carbohydrates or not.

I know plenty of fat vegans including a family member who became diabetic and
suffered a stroke because of it. Of course your and my experiences are both
anecdotal, but I do believe I have heard studies showing that vegetarians do
suffer disproportionately of heart disease. I'll try and google it.

~~~
jerf
Followup to that, because vegetarians eat things that are less dense in some
vital nutrients, a good health-aware vegetarian will discover they need to
stay away from the high-carb veggies like potatoes because they also have no
nutrient value to speak of, and filling up on potatoes means you're not
filling up on things high in iron (for example).

(Yes, part of the reason some vegetarians are vegetarians is because plants
can be more rich in nutrients, but it is not automatically balanced, and some
vital nutrients are more challenging to get than others.)

In that case, a vegetarian ends up eating a not-excessively-large portion of
carbs naturally.

A bad vegetarian who assumes if it's not meat it must be healthy can still get
in trouble, not just on this front but on others as well. It's not that
simple.

(I've resolved that if any of my children ever want to be vegetarians, I'm OK
with that, but a critical precondition is that they demonstrate that they have
done their homework and understand the nutritional implications. I believe it
can be done safely, but it's not trivial; it takes work in our environment.)

~~~
jsdalton
Sorry, question, why do you say that potatoes have no nutritional value?
Everything I have found seems to indicate potatoes are high in nutritional
value (e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Nutrition>). I have also
heard it said that it is possible to subsist entirely on a diet of milk and
potatoes, as many Irish families did for quite a long time.

~~~
bobdole2695
Survive does not mean thrive.

The Irish have also had a long time to adapt to that diet. They're much less
carb sensitive than others. Hence the difference between people from cultures
who've eaten a traditionally low-carb diet vs those eating a high-carb diet.
Native Americans suffer greatly, but those who traditionally farmed (Asians
who eat rice for example) are healthy.

