I think we totally agree. My entire point is that this is enormously complicated, but mostly in the psychology department, and not so much in the eating department. Eating a caloric defect works for everyone, so the difficult part is figuring out how to get them to do that, which seems to be a psychological issue entirely.

Again, we agree that it is enormously complex, I am lamenting the fact that we don't put more resources into the psychological aspect of it.

Of course eating at a calorie deficit will work for everyone if your only goal is 'lose weight'. If you actually want to be healthy it's more complicated than that.

Maybe, but there is a massive amount of low hanging fruit in terms of making people healthy by simply making them less fat.

Have you considered that what you eat might make a difference to your psychology?

Of course, what I'd like is more studying of that and less studying of whether or not different macronutrient compositions cause you to lose more weight through something other than calorie deficit.

I think the point is that the macronutrient compositions is the driver in how food affects your behavior.

That is, what you are asking for is a study that would show why large populations of people can't just "eat less." Why are they stuck in a rut of eating more than they need? Worse, why are many of them not even happy about it, but still can't get out?

This hypothesis is basically that that behavior is fueled by a feedback cycle that has, in large part, the actual foods that people eat caught in it somewhere.

Now, I think I see what you are getting at. Could you fix this at other parts of the feedback cycle? Perhaps. And I certainly agree that should get research, too. I just don't think this research is unrelated.

> I think the point is that the macronutrient compositions is the driver in how food affects your behavior.

That is absolutely not the point of Taubes's research. Reread the article.

Sorry, my point is more that the study would be basically the same anyway.

That is, if this singles out some food as more likely to cause overeating/fat gain, that will still be an incomplete explanation. Which is where the psychology aspect would step up.

Right?

> Sorry, my point is more that the study would be basically the same anyway.

I disagree, the study would be completely different. This study is studying the acute effects of diet on the body, specifically trying to determine if macronutrient composition has an effect on weight loss, given equal calories.

The study I'm talking about would deal with long term behavioral aspects of dieting, and would look for people who had long term success with dieting and see what they are eating. Or maybe there would be some other study design, but it certainly wouldn't be like the one they are doing now, which completely controls diet thus eliminating the compliance aspect.

The reason I think this distinction is so important is because of the amount of energy being consumed by the scientific community around debating the question of whether or not macronutrient composition has a direct effect on weight loss. Even if the people who feel like macronutrient composition has a direct impact on weight loss are right, the effect is not very dramatic.

It would be much more fruitful to study the psychological impact of specific diets, and whether or not they are likely to impact over eating, which is the one and only cause of obesity, as you mentioned.

You don't think they'll be keeping behavioral notes on the subjects? They are keeping them under observation for the full study, right? Seems logical to record behavior, as well.

Though, I do have to cede the point that a proper study of this sort would be different.