Gary Taubes on carbohydrate restriction: recommends

Gary Taubes says obesity is best understood as a hormonal disorder of fat accumulation, not a calorie-balance failure, and that reducing carbohydrate intake — especially refined carbohydrates and sugars — is the key lever for controlling insulin and fat storage. This is the central thesis he develops in Why We Get Fat and in Part V of Good Calories, Bad Calories, titled “Adiposity 101.”

His stated reasoning: he argues that insulin drives fat accumulation, so the foods that raise insulin most — digestible carbohydrates — are, in his view, the ones that most reliably promote fat storage. He frames this as an alternative hypothesis of obesity to the conventional energy-balance (calories-in/calories-out) model, and presents it as his own position throughout his books and lectures.

Criticism worth noting: the carbohydrate–insulin model is contested. Per Wikipedia’s entry on the model, “some experts consider that these studies falsified” the hypothesis while “proponents disagree,” and “available evidence does not support the existence of a long-term advantage in weight loss for low-carbohydrate diets.” Taubes disputes that characterization; this site reports both sides without taking a position.

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