From David Carr
“It is time to put science back in charge” states the one-man bandwagon Gary Taubes (19 January, p 17). Despite the fact that “we are overeating” it seems that dieting does not work.
But blaming the theory is not helpful. If a patient is prescribed penicillin for an infection and neglects to take it, it is not the drug that has failed but the patient; the same goes for a dietary recommendation.
Scientists do not search for the “remembering gene” as causality for forgetting to take a pill. One problem is not that dieting does not work for people, but that people do not work for their diets.
Finding excuses for obesity, whether genetic or hormonal, enables people to disown responsibility for their actions, while a dietary education promotes self-ownership and encourages a healthier lifestyle. The plain truth is that burning off more calories than are consumed – admittedly easier said than done – will cause weight loss and a subsequent change in hormonal equilibrium.
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Although overeating may not be the “root cause” of the problem, if Taubes would get his head out of the clouds and into the literature since 1945, he might realise that there is much current integrative research into energy balance, metabolism and the neuroendocrine basis of obesity. To declare otherwise does the scientists an injustice and the public a disservice.
I was interested to read Gary Taubes’s precis of his timely new book debunking the connection between overeating and obesity, but felt there were a number of flaws to the arguments contained in it. The most obvious, to my mind, stems from the assertion that children “overeat” during growth spurts. This is not true: they are merely eating in a manner to satisfy the demands of their bodies at that stage of their development.
How do you define “overeating” anyway? In adults – whose differing characteristics and lifestyles preclude the possibility of attaching a single calorific value to the concept – the only definition available is surely one along the lines of: “eating more food than you need, with the result that at least some of the excess is stored in the body”. Following such a diet for a long time will lead to obesity. The concepts of obesity and overeating are therefore mutually definitive, and any attempt to suggest they are not connected is therefore doomed.
London, UK
