Gary Taubes on the 'calories in, calories out' model as the explanation for obesity: warns against

Gary Taubes warns that treating obesity as a simple energy-balance disorder — calories in versus calories out — is scientifically vacuous. His formulation of the inversion is: “we don’t get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we’re getting fat.” He argues this across Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories.

His stated reasoning: he says the energy-balance statement is a tautology — that it describes what happens without explaining why — and that it misleads by implying that fat accumulation is simply a matter of willpower and arithmetic rather than a hormonal process. Taubes’s critique of the model is longstanding and runs through his 2013 University of Colorado Medical School lecture as well.

Criticism worth noting: the energy-balance framework remains the dominant model in mainstream obesity science, and many researchers consider Taubes’s dismissal of it misguided; the carbohydrate–insulin alternative he proposes is itself contested (see the criticism sections on the carbohydrate-restriction and NuSI pages). This site reports both sides without taking a position.

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.