The Best of Gary Taubes Recent AMA on Reddit

Gary Taubes recently did an AMA on Reddit. For those of you unfamiliar with an “AMA”, it’s essentially an extended Q&A with a notable figure. Since we’re big fans of Gary here on the site, we thought we’d feature a few of his most popular answers.

Without further ado, here you go. Check it out.

The Best of Gary Taubes AMA on Reddit

Question #1 Sweet Little Lies – paintinginacave

Hello Mr. Taubes. In your article “Sweet Little Lies” you talk a lot about the history of the sugar lobby, especially one report that was stacked with sugar industry lobbyists and came to the conclusion that sugar was regarded GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe). I have a few questions about this.

1. You claim that there was plenty of evidence at the time that sugar should NOT be labelled as GRAS. Do you think that it should not be? As in, it is toxic enough to be banned as an added substance in our food?
2. On a related note, do you think it would be realistic at this point to partially or completely ban sugar?
3. What do you think about mayor Bloomberg’s large-size soda ban in NYC?
4. If government intervention/regulation is not the answer, what is? Education?

Answer

The GRAS review was fascinating because there was indeed plenty of evidence suggesting that sugar was not safe, but the question to some extent was whether it was “generally recognized as safe”, which it was. What amazes me about all this is that there was no mechanism for these GRAS reviews to say, “hey, this is a tricky issue, we need more research done and will postpone our decision until we have unambiguous evidence.” Instead, they just gave sugar a pass because evidence was not definitive and most experts were obsessed with dietary fat.

As for banning sugar, I can’t see that ever happening and I’m not sure it would be a good idea in any case (see, alcohol and prohibition and the war on drugs for possible unintended consequences). What I can see is the country getting to a place, as it has with cigarettes, where the huge majority of the population understands the dangers of partaking and so restricts consumption significantly and the food industry gets on board by taking sugar out of products, or reducing greatly the amount, and then advertising it as such.

And, yes, I’m a big fan of education as a potential answer.

Question #2 – 200lbs – kittee

You were the catalyst for my 200 pound weight loss. I can’t thank you enough.

Answer

Also made my day. thanks.

Question #3 – Calories in vs. Calories Out – eric_twinge

Mr. Taubes,

Could you clarify your opinion on calories in/out and it’s implication for weight loss? I’ve seen people twist your words a lot of ways on the issue.

One camp says you think calories in/out is solid, however it’s lacking in that does not address the behavioral aspect of eating and weight gain. The other says the whole in/out thing is bunk, and any carbs mean weight gain, because insulin.

Where exactly do you stand?

Answer

I think calories in/calories out is simply the wrong paradigm to understand obesity and so meaningless. If someone gets fatter, they have to take in more calories than they expend. The same is true when gets kid taller, when people put on muscle instead of fat, etc. Focusing on calories tells you nothing about cause — why one person puts on fat, another grows taller, one does both, etc.

I’ve been thinking once again about how to clarify this and I’ve come up with a couple of ideas. For one, I’ll use sugar as the example because that’s supposed to be the subject today. Imagine we have a pair of identical twins. Say 18-year-old boys. Every day we measure their energy expenditure and every day we feed them exactly how many calories they expend. So we match calories in to calories out. They get both the same diet with one exception: one gets 300 calories of sugar or HFCS where the other gets 300 calories of a different carbohydrate or of fat. Then we continue this feeding experiment for the next 20 years or so. (Because this is a thought experiment, we don’t have to worry about the ethical issues or Institutional Review Boards.)

If you believe obesity is about calorie-in-calories-out and that’s the only thing that matters, then both twins are going to end up exactly the same weight with exactly same amount of fat on their body and they’re both going to end up expending the same amount of energy. If you believe that the hormonal/metabolic effect of different nutrients is the key factor, then the sugar in the diet of one twin is going to effect his insulin signaling, hepatic (liver) fat production and accumulation, etc, and possibly his fuel partitioning. This twin will end up with more fat, and maybe lower energy expenditure as well. (He or she can’t end up weighing more, because we always match calories in to calories out.) The way they partition fuel into storage or oxidation will have changed significantly because of the change in macronutrient composition.

Now if we do the same experiment, but fix the calories in at whatever the twins we’re expending at the beginning of the experiment (rather than adjusting it to the expenditure day by day) then the sugar-fed twin is likely to end up fatter as well as heavier because now the partitioning of fuel to fat instead of oxidation can cause this twin to both get heavier and expend less, and so go into positive energy balance.

And if these twins were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, the twin eating the sugar diet might crave more food to compensate for the loss of calories into the fat tissue and the greater need of a larger body.

Finally, imagine we do the same study with 10,000 twins or 100,000 twins. Half get the diet without sugar and half with. The population that gets the sugar, according to this hypothesis, would have more obese twins, more diabetic twins, etc. despite, again, total calories consumed being equal.

Now think of the opposite experiment for weight loss, and you can see why I think calories in/out is meaningless. We could match calories in a pair of obese identical twins and change the macronutrient composition in such away that one twin mobilizes fat from the fat tissue and oxidizes it and the other doesn’t. So one twin will lose weight and be in negative energy balance if we allow that to happen and do so on the same number of calories that keeps the other twin as fat as ever and in energy balance.

Does this make sense?

Question #4 – Alzheimers Type 3 Diabetes? – bergtown

I see articles here and there calling Alzheimer’s “type three diabetes”. Do you think that’s a statement with merit, or would you call it hyperbole?

Answer

That Alzheimer’s associates with diabetes and obesity suggests there’s something to it, and there’s good evidence that insulin and insulin resistance are involved in the disease state. I discuss that science (and get some of it wrong) in Good Calories, Bad Calories. Researchers I respect do go for the type three diabetes notion, but I’d say it’s still preliminary so bordering on hyperbole. As for silverhydra’s comment below, the primary Alzheimer’s researchers tend to all have their different opinions on causal factors in the disease state, even down to the roles played by amyloid beta and tau tangles. One advantage a journalist in this business is the ability to speak to everyone in the field, or all the major players, and try to make some sense about how the evidence supports the different biases. Whether this is enough to compensate for the obvious lack of expertise or training that the journalist brings to the issue (whether me or Mark Bittman or Gina Kolata or any other) is always an open question and a matter of opinion. If we always had to defer to the authority of primary researchers, then we’d better hope the primary researchers are doing a better job in Alzheimer’s research than they’ve done in, say, nutrition and obesity.

Question #5 – IGF- 1-  litium3n

Mr. Taubes,

There seems to be a claim that one of the reasons why carbohydrates should be controlled for adults is that it causes higher levels of IGF-1 which spur the growth of cancer cells. However, IGF-1 is also needed growth for children, would you recommend children to eat a proper amount of carbohydrates instead of out-right avoiding it? Other than avoiding sugar, and refined grains, what are the best sources of carbohydrates for growing children?

Answer

Excellent question. I often wonder if keeping my kids away from sugar will also mean they won’t grow as tall as their peer group, because of this IGF-1 issue. It’s one reason why I’m not more strict than I am. But there’s no reason to restrict all carbs if your kids don’t have a weight problem. Keeping sugar consumption low and the more obvious processed, refined grains seems like a reasonable compromise.

Question #6 – Gary Taubes on Paleo – phillintheb1ank

Where do you come down on the Paleo movement?

Answer

I’m obviously a big fan as I think the paleo movement will go along way to getting the conventional wisdom changed. There are some tremendously smart people pushing the Paleo movement and they’ve raised issues of mechanisms that are intriguing and that go far beyond what I’ve discussed in my books. I’m hoping that one role of NuSI will be to help elucidate and test these mechanistic questions as well.

Question # 7 – What do you eat? – sacman

Hello, Mr. Taubes.

I’m simply interested in what you, personally, eat. Any chance you’d give us a rundown on what you’ve consumed over the past, say, 72 hours?

Thanks in advance!

Answer

I’ve been traveling the last 72 hours so it’s not all that meaningful, but I can tell you that I have eggs, sausage and bacon pretty much every morning of my life, and avoid, for the most part, refined grains and starches. My wife’s a mostly vegetarian, so we tend to make our own dinners. I’ll cook some meat or fish and eat it with a green vegetable that she also eats. As for the kids, well, that’s a constant struggle. I don’t want to be a food zealot with them, but they do consume significantly less sugar than most of their peers. As for tonight, I’m off duty. We’ll probably let them eat three or four pieces of candy and then throw most of the rest out after they go to sleep. I’ll direct them to the Snicker’s and Reese’s peanut butter cups because that’s what I’d be eating — and might have a few small bites — if I had my choice. While I mostly avoid refined grains, sugar and starches, I’m not completely rigid about it because my weight is fine and I’m healthy. If I found my weight was creeping back up, I’d get a lot more rigid.

Question #8 –  Thoughts on Ketosis? – kibubik

What are your thoughts on ketosis? We have a strong group here in /r/keto that follow a ketogenic diet for weight loss. Weight loss aside, do you feel ketogenic dieting can offer benefits to your average healthy-weight any individual?

Answer

I obviously think ketogenic diets are healthful and that for many Americans they may be the only dietary intervention that will return them to metabolic health. A more important question to me is how much benefit can individuals get from going low-carb, compared to going all the way to a ketogenic diet? For instance, I doubt I’m in ketosis and have never measured, but I’m still 20 pounds lighter than I was back in my carb days.

Question #9 – On Sugar Addiction – ohThatNeal

Thanks for the AMA! Could you please offer your perspective on sugar addiction? In many of my health and nutrition classes, professors speak about how sugar is the most addicting substance we encounter daily. Even more than caffeine. Are these claims founded?

Answer

I find the science not as compelling as I would like, and I find it fascinating that so few research groups have studied this. As a parent, I have little doubt that sugar is addicting and plays havoc with the brains of children. Or at least my children. As an ex-smoker and someone who has a sweet tooth, I also think it’s quite obviously addictive.

For the full AMA, click here.