As promised in response to my Salvaging the Hypothesis post, Adam Kosloff of Caloriegate blog, recently provided me with a copy of Beyond Caloriegate. My original post began with something like: "Let me start by saying I had never heard of this guy before reading Jimmy's post, but wonder, if LC is so great, why would one need a "Survivor's Guide"?" Little did I realize late in 2010 when I published the original, that this was Adam Kosloff, the man behind the original GCBC for Dummies (as I call it) website. Although Adam acknowledges that the website is outdated, we can probably attribute a large proportion of the remaining "can't store fat w/o carbs" faction of TWICHOOB's to this very fact (that it has not been scrubbed of this erroneous information).
So, I've written to Adam with my thoughts on his new book. I quickly came to the conclusion that it would be fruitless to pursue this vein any further. I'm not even sure exactly what it is that Taubes believes anymore to be honest. Because he used to use the phrase "excess calories" all the time and now he's pretty much dug his heels in that calories don't matter. He used to say that the causality arrow was backwards -- that it is because they are getting fatter that obese eat more and perhaps become sedentary. Now we're back to overeating being an "inane" concept. It's all those insulin spiking foods -- including the pasta and bread and whatnot -- but now that's not even really it, because without sugar you can probably eat all of that and stay lean (The "SEA corollary" of TWICHOO - SEA = South-East Asian). Perhaps it's time to demand of Gary Taubes to tell us what exactly his hypothesis IS these days. Or better yet, instead of the incessant claims that CICO is debunked, doesn't work, etc., how about YOU pony up the evidence for a change. The Pima ain't it!
As I told Adam in my email, the ball has been in Gary's court for a very, very long time. The most "hostile" interview he has ever agreed to has been on the Oz show. That's how much confidence he apparently has in his position. If he's not willing to address the science, in a forum that he can't control via the workings of Jimmy Moore, what's the point of others trying to do that for him? So this previous post of mine will stand as my answer to Caloriegate and Beyond Caloriegate, because as I see things, nothing much has changed on the other side of this debate. And contrary to what I think Adam hopes, there's nothing agnostic about his "black box" because it requires denouncing that calories count and basically claims TWICHOO is the biggest badass component of the box we have to work with. Thus all my criticisms and debunkings of TWICHOO ultimately answer to challenges to us "Calorie Wizards" as Adam calls us in the book.
I do, however, reserve the right to reclaim the "black box" concept for it's rightful CICO owners ;-) I by no means coined the phrase, but I believe I've used the phrase enough times to stake my claim on behalf of believers in The First Law of Thermo everywhere. Perhaps I'll do a post on it at some point. Hmm... I do have a CICO post in the works. It might fit nicely at the end.
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So, I've written to Adam with my thoughts on his new book. I quickly came to the conclusion that it would be fruitless to pursue this vein any further. I'm not even sure exactly what it is that Taubes believes anymore to be honest. Because he used to use the phrase "excess calories" all the time and now he's pretty much dug his heels in that calories don't matter. He used to say that the causality arrow was backwards -- that it is because they are getting fatter that obese eat more and perhaps become sedentary. Now we're back to overeating being an "inane" concept. It's all those insulin spiking foods -- including the pasta and bread and whatnot -- but now that's not even really it, because without sugar you can probably eat all of that and stay lean (The "SEA corollary" of TWICHOO - SEA = South-East Asian). Perhaps it's time to demand of Gary Taubes to tell us what exactly his hypothesis IS these days. Or better yet, instead of the incessant claims that CICO is debunked, doesn't work, etc., how about YOU pony up the evidence for a change. The Pima ain't it!
As I told Adam in my email, the ball has been in Gary's court for a very, very long time. The most "hostile" interview he has ever agreed to has been on the Oz show. That's how much confidence he apparently has in his position. If he's not willing to address the science, in a forum that he can't control via the workings of Jimmy Moore, what's the point of others trying to do that for him? So this previous post of mine will stand as my answer to Caloriegate and Beyond Caloriegate, because as I see things, nothing much has changed on the other side of this debate. And contrary to what I think Adam hopes, there's nothing agnostic about his "black box" because it requires denouncing that calories count and basically claims TWICHOO is the biggest badass component of the box we have to work with. Thus all my criticisms and debunkings of TWICHOO ultimately answer to challenges to us "Calorie Wizards" as Adam calls us in the book.
I do, however, reserve the right to reclaim the "black box" concept for it's rightful CICO owners ;-) I by no means coined the phrase, but I believe I've used the phrase enough times to stake my claim on behalf of believers in The First Law of Thermo everywhere. Perhaps I'll do a post on it at some point. Hmm... I do have a CICO post in the works. It might fit nicely at the end.
