No, the cause of obesity is very clear. Obesity results from an imbalance between energy consumed in foods and energy burned by metabolic processes and physical activity. Michael Phelps, when he was in training, consumed up to 12,000 calories per day. He said his diet regularly included sugar covered French toast, chocolate chip pancakes, pizza, lots of white bread and plenty of those sugar loaded energy drinks. I don't think anyone would consider Phelps to be overweight or unhealthy.
The first law of thermodynamics says you can't get something from nothing. People who believe that there are good foods and bad foods, rather than just food, don't understand that you can feed someone nothing but white bread, chocolate flavored milk, and high fructose corn syrup, and they will not gain weight (and will actually lose weight) if they expend more energy than they consume.
People don't get fat because they overeat, they overeat because their metabolism is storing excess fat.
This is nonsense. Humans will burn burn fat, rather than store it, if the body is using more energy than it takes in. Anyone who thinks otherwise is in denial of the thermodynamic perspective.
If raised insulin levels were in some way responsible for obesity, then we'd be seeing all sorts of studies correlating caffeine consumption with obesity. I haven't seen any. But how is that possible when caffeine consumption causes an insulin response?
People can and do eat carbs without getting fat and sick. But at any level of carb intake, there will be some who will
So, for some people, the only way to be healthy is to avoid carbohydrates altogether? That's sure sounds like what you're saying. If so, that's just more nonsense that cannot be supported by sound science. The Japanese, and many other Asian nations, stand in stark contrast to this belief of yours as they continue to enjoy the world's highest life expectancy. All those people who worked on farms several generations ago that ate huge amounts of carbohydrates, while working 12 hours a day in the fields and never getting fat, also prove that this can't be true. I watched Michael Phelps in the Olympics and he didn't look unhealthy to me. I agree that there will always be people who rely far too much on one macronutrient in their diet rather than eating all of them in balance, and that they will probably be less healthy than those that do. No surprises there.
Japanese grade school kids, their older siblings, and their parents, all consume a diet high in high GI carbs. The Japanese are hardly an obese or physically sick society. They don't have as much protein in their diets as Americans, but I can't imagine anyone thinking they are sickly because they've relied on a high carbohydrate diet for thousands of years. Good grief, the Roman armies conquered the world marching on bread.
Science tells us that the total number of calories is what is important – while the macronutrient ratio is not terribly important – provided it does not lead to malnutrition. Demonization of one macronutrient or another is a common trait of diet fads. History shows you can sell diet advice more easily if you claim that fats or carbs are the problem – while the (admittedly rather obvious) idea that calories are the problem seems to be something that few are prepared to pay for. Yup, bad nutritional advice and a lack of understanding can be blamed on money. Unlike lobbyists, however, this nonsense is being promoted by charlatans who are solely interested in grant money and others who simply want to sell you something.
Obesity results from an imbalance between energy consumed in foods and energy burned by metabolic processes and physical activity.
Frankly, that's nonsensical. It's equivalent to saying that a nightclub is crowded because more people came in the doors than went out. It's true, because it's tautological. It says nothing about causation.
If people are gaining weight, they are taking in more calories than they consume. This is true, regardless of whether they are a teen going through a growth spurt or a middle-aged man growing a middle. The reason they are building muscle or bone or fat is that their hormones are partitioning incoming nutrients into building muscle or bone or fat.
This isn't crackpot science, it's not even controversial. It's well-established science you can find in every biochemistry textbook.
But for some reason, many assume that it isn't relevant, because if people would eat less and exercise more, their hormonal levels would automatically adapt to the reduced available nutrients by partitioning less energy into fat deposition. And the problem with that it is demonstrably not true.
It's not only possible, it's quite common, for the body to respond to a calorie deficit by decreasing energy levels, cannibalizing muscle, and maintaining or even continuing to increase fat deposits.