What makes us fat? It’s a contentious debate in the world of health science. Is obesity caused by energy imbalance — consuming too many calories — as has long been conventional thought? Or is obesity caused by the effects of carbohydrates on insulin? My guest on today’s program attended an invite-only global gathering of obesity experts. The resulting paper in Nature Metabolism, co-authored with fifteen other researchers and published this fall, compares the two competing hypotheses side-by-side, as equals. Which, my guest writes, “has never before happened in the century-plus history of meaningful research on the cause of obesity.”
Gary Taubes is an award-winning investigative science and health journalist. His latest book is Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments. With the journalist Nina Teicholz, he writes the Substack newsletter Unsettled Science.
Gary Taubes is my guest, today on Lean Out. Transcript to come for paid subscribers.
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