> As humans, we don't have researchers who are so talented that if you ask them to answer nutritional questions, they will consistently and independently come to the same conclusions. This isn't because nutritionists are dumb, this is because nutrition is hard. However, it makes it much harder to suss out dumb nutritionists when the smart ones disagree.
AFAICT, that's not true, and only appears true because of the vast amount of attention one side is able to get, despite being an incredibly small minority.
From what I understand (I'm not in the field and not an expert), except for the few researchers in this article, basically every scientist working in nutrition will say that the energy balance model is correct, and that there's nothing special about carbs.
The media loves to amplify the contrarian and minority voices (see also things like climate change). But they really are outliers, and there really is a consensus, at least on this one big question.
I don't think these researchers are saying that EBM is false per se. They state, “Conceptualizing obesity as a disorder of energy balance restates a principle of physics without considering the biological mechanisms that promote weight gain.” My reading of that is that EBM isn't very helpful as a weight loss strategy because it's harder to "just eat less" if your whole diet is sugar. The CIM explains one's diet's effect on appetite, so can help come up with strategies that make it easier to eat less.
They believe that the "causality" of weight gain is reversed as opposed to EBM - it's not that eating more calories causes weight gain, it's that your body choosing to store more fat (because of higher carb intake) causes you to eat more calories.
I disagree with their ideas, but they do offer very specific differences from the EBM model, both as a tool for understanding obesity and as a tool for transforming public health.
E.g. even in their abstract:
> According to a commonly held view, the obesity pandemic is caused
by overconsumption of modern, highly palatable, energy-dense
processed foods, exacerbated by a sedentary lifestyle. However, obesity rates remain at historic highs, despite a persistent focus on eating less and moving more, as guided by the energy balance model
(EBM).
They're directly challenging the "orthodox" view that we need to get people to eat less and move more.
But that view works! It's not the end of the discussion, because people overeat for many reasons, and in my view high palatability of food and having more wealth are the main culprits. But they clearly disagree, since they devote sections of their article to addressing exactly these ideas and why they're wrong.
Btw, for the record, all these researchers are way more knowledgeable than I am about all of this - I have no education in nutrition at all. But I have pretty solid evidence that they're wrong - lots of other smart people say they're wrong, there's lots of direct evidence that they're wrong (studies in humans), I personally lost a bunch of weight by counting calories and restricting the amounts that I ate, etc.
AFAICT, that's not true, and only appears true because of the vast amount of attention one side is able to get, despite being an incredibly small minority.
From what I understand (I'm not in the field and not an expert), except for the few researchers in this article, basically every scientist working in nutrition will say that the energy balance model is correct, and that there's nothing special about carbs.
The media loves to amplify the contrarian and minority voices (see also things like climate change). But they really are outliers, and there really is a consensus, at least on this one big question.