The Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 starts in a few days. Everyone who’s anyone in the Paleo world will gather in Boston.
My talk from last year is the most viewed one from AHS 2011. I’ll attempt to bring something interesting again. A new presentation called The Carb Controversy – and how Paleo could save America.
Pictured above is a slide from it. What’s this about “calories striking back” you ask? Well, check out the next slide:
Next slide
Let me explain this with a short story:
Paleo Wars IV: A New Hope
There is an obesity epidemic spreading everywhere. People are told to count their calories (while eating their fast food) yet they get more obese every year.
Luckily the Paleo movement shows up. All the “founding fathers” – like Loren Cordain, Robb Wolf and Mark Sisson – emphasized avoiding high glycemic load carbs (like sugar & flour) to avoid too much insulin and weight gain.
That’s revolutionary and unconventional advice. Also, it works. I think it’s one of the major reasons why Paleo has rapidly become so popular.
The Calorie Strikes Back
Some influential people in the Paleo blogosphere are now claiming that carbs, macronutrients or insulin have nothing to do with weigh gain. They say it’s really all about calories (again).
I think this is a return to the same old simplistic calories in/out thinking that has failed us during the entire obesity epidemic. Only this time the calories in/out idea is wrapped in something called the “Food Reward” theory.
The Return of Low Carb
In my talk I’ll show how there’s no reason to choose between insulin or food reward to explain obesity. These two theories work beautifully together.
I’ll also show how much insulin has to do with weight control and how the common objections keep missing the point.
Hopefully this way the galaxy can live happily (and thinner) ever after.
What do you say?
Who’s who in the picture above?
PS
If you’re going to be at the AHS my talk is at 4:40 pm Saturday, August 11. Don’t worry, it will feature not only movie posters but some exciting science as well.
Hopefully a high-quality video of the presentation will be posted online later.
Earlier posts on this topic
The #1 Cause of Obesity: Insulin
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It's as if both groups have off-loaded their health onto a science journalist. They're angry, angry, angry and for some reason choose to crucify Taubes. It's really irrational.
Taubes' simple advice works for about 80% of the general population -the mass for whom his publisher aims his works. The remaining 20% have special health issues that they in general seem to complain about on blogs, but never seem willing to address.
Dudes, if it's not working for you, get your genes and hormones tested. This is your responsibility not Taubes'!
If you're post-menopausal and stop losing, go ketogenic - 85-88% fat. If that doesn't work, stay ketogenic and limit calories to 1600. If that doesn't work, then take hormones because you have a hormone problem, not a weight problem.
If you're deeply, deeply insulin-resistant, also try ketogenic, and if that doesn't work, check to see if you have fatty liver or pre-diabetes. Then take metformin and start lifting weights.
If you have PCOS, you're probably on metformin already; if not, check with your doctor.
If you're diligent about low-carbing but your cholesterol skyrockets and doesn't come down within 6-12 months, get tested for FH or APOE4 and check your particles.
If you're diligent about low-carbing but your blood pressure explodes, get a hormone test, a mineral balance test and a kidney ultrasound. Talk to your doctor to discover your health issue. Start yoga, meditation, biofeedback. If lowering stress doesn't help, get your genes tested - if you discover a genetic problem, talk to your doctor.
If you're diligent about low-carbing and can't lose weight or gain muscle, get your hormones checked. You may have a thyroid problem; talk to your doctor about hormones.
I very rarely see those with problems follow through on resolving these problems. Why is this? Why instead do they haunt the blogs stalking, complaining, and trolling?
Why do people project their health problems onto Taubes? He's not Jesus - only you can save yourself. 
@Galina
How much has changed in Paleo! Paleo as currently practiced by the majority of people is not low-carb. The overlap of the Crossfit community to the Paleo community is very large now. They are not low-carbing. As can be seen on Paleohacks, a good website to judge current Paleo practice, the majority appear to be eating more than 200 total carbs a day (moderate carbs), and many of the younger weight-lifting males are pushing that to 250.
Further, the Paleo majority mocks you. Sorry to be blunt. They have zero interest in being associated with "broken" fat middle-aged women. They are more than happy to "hack" you in a mean-spirit, just as they do Jimmy Moore. Why don't you start Crossfit?
If you wish to heal the breach with Paleo, that's great; just know they are defining themselves as everything *not* you. So that will be a very hard, hard road.
Best wishes, and I hope you resolve your weight issues.
Of course i don't know you and I don't want to judge you. So may I ask if you supplement with B12? Because while the online interface is naturally brusque, please forgive me if I observe that you seem really really angry. Are you perhaps vegetarian?
Otherwise, I agree with your point about insulin. People don't inject it for weight loss because - as every single biochemistry textbook says plainly - it's the fat-storage hormone, even more so than leptin. Those who say otherwise are in denial of established scientific fact.
As an aside to Andreas about potatoes, you say insulin spikes are fine for "metabolically healthy" people. I think we now know that almost no one in any modern culture over 18 is really metabolically healthy any more. Do you honestly feel comfortable with this advice?
Further, even if it were so, don't you worry about the long term effects of AGEs - cataracts, etc? Decades of "normal" insulin spikes may be the cause of many problems in the elderly. Wouldn't you want people to have a healthier old age?
On your point about hunger, Andreas - that's precisely the problem. The "argument" about calories isn't scientific - it's a thin mask for a Calvinist hatred of fat people. Thin people are the naturally virtuous, chosen by God (given good genes). Fat people are damned lazy sinners (given bad genes) who must be punished, punished, punished if thin people want to stay in the Grace of God.
The thin MUST make the fat SUFFER for their evil, fallen nature lest they share the pains of Hell with them. You will never end the fake debate until you directly address the irrational Calvinism underlying the calorie discussion. I suggest you bring scarlet letter Fs to your talk and pass them out for the fatties to wear. That will please the Paleo/Crossfit crowd.
Make sure any mothers who can't quite shed the baby weight or women over 40 feel specially humiliated for their disgusting sinful carnal natures that have resulted in the disgusting Mark of Fat (Eve). Only you can uphold the moral order of Nature, Doc!
@Jordan
"Because there's a difference between endogenous and exogenous insulin."
And what is it, pray tell? They are similar enough to successfully function in the body and keep diabetics alive, but are suddenly somehow also simultaneously different in what way so as to cause obesity? Please do explain in detail. References to peer-reviewed research and biochem texts will be most appreciated.
"potatoes were quite the staple in America"
No, actually, they were not outside of wartime and they are not now: to conclude that something that comprises only about 3% of our calories is a staple surely cannot be correct (see 2012 consumption study below). The secret is that people really don't seem to like them much - throughout history. Really.
Before the USDA pushed wheat, they pushed potatoes. There used to be ads on TV discussing the wonderful benefits of potatoes! This program is still going on, actually with the United States Potato Board. (http://www.uspotatoes.com/pressRoom/pr.php?id=184 and https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:uxOKyOXsa1kJ:industry...). The USDA has an official potato marketing plan (http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/FVResearchandPromotionPotatoes).
Your idea that potatoes were a staple food before the beginning of government programs is false and is exactly what the marketing program was established to lead you to believe. Altho' some potatoes were grown in the Eastern United States since colonial times, they were not a staple crop for most Americans, just as they were not for most Europeans until a couple of hundred years after their introduction there. And then only due to the force of sheer starvation.
Remember, European people, esp. the English, were at first very suspicious of potatoes, as they were members of the nightshade family. In fact the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin warned of their poisonous and unhealthy nature in 1598.
It took quite a while for Europeans to adopt the potato. They really weren't adopted widely in Europe until a disastrous winter in 1740 that caused a famine, and which only potatoes survived. Germans(!) were especially slow to adopt the potato until the famine of 1817, even tho' Frederick the Great had ordered them to be planted (mostly to feed his armies).
Even the Irish didn't come to depend upon potatoes until they were forced to by changes to the "conacre" system, imposed upon them by their British landlords. Russians refused to plant potatoes as late as 1843, calling them Devil's Fruit. The czar had to send force to make the serfs plant them.
So you see potatoes have a long history as an unloved food begrudgingly used only in times of utmost misery and sometimes planted only at the point of an emperor's bayonet! Seriously, I'm not making this up.
The US government began encouraging potato agriculture in 1866. The varieties we know today like Early Rose and Russet actually didn't even arrive the in the USA until 1876 (Civil War times). Potatoes have been heavily subsidized in various ways at different times since the 1920s, altho' the current program goes back only to the 70s.
Even today the government frets that Americans don't eat "enough" potatoes! (http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112518791/study-finds-surprisingly-low-potato-consumption-in-the-us/). We just don't love them, even as fries - they are only 3.3% of our calories. So now the government is seeking to find ways to make us eat "enough."
You have to ask yourself why and how "Idaho" somehow became synonymous with "potato." It wasn't due to an inevitable law of physics, you know.
The mountains of potato oversurplus we suffer from today, just as we suffer from oversurplus of corn, were intentionally created by government policy to buy farm votes and accidentally ended up allowing the creation and endurance of the fast food culture. 1/3 of the potato crop goes to animal feed and processed starches. . . again, think "corn."