An explanation of the Positive Caloric Balance hypothesis and the flawed conclusions that are invariably drawn from it. While it is not the science itself, it is a good explanation of the application of the science.
From this link:
(can't get the full version for some reason)
http://72.14.205.104/search?....1&gl=ca
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"Charles
Feb 11 2008, 11:39am
GCBC Chapter 17: Conservation of Energy, pages 292-296.
Before World War II, our current understanding (the positive caloric balance hypothesis) that overeating and sedentary behavior cause obesity, was one of several competing hypotheses. We know that the positive caloric balance hypothesis became the conventional wisdom. Any attempt to dispute the accepted wisdom was treated, as it still is, as an attempt to absolve the obese and overweight of the necessity to exercise and restrain their appetites.
The positive caloric balance conviction is based on an incontrovertible implication of the first law of thermodynamics. Anyone who challenges this view is seen as willfully disregarding a scientific truth. In the early 1950s, Columbia University physiologist John Taggart said “Let me state that we have implicit faith in the validity of the first law of thermodynamics. A calorie is a calorie.” “Calories in equals calories out and that’s that.”
Unfortunately, it isn’t. This faith in the laws of thermodynamics is founded on two misinterpretations of thermodynamic law and not in the law itself. When we correct these misconceptions they alter our perceptions of weight regulation and the forces at work.
This view also pervades the "low-carb" community as well. We get caught up in well-publicized arguments about whether there is a metabolic advantage or restoration or whatever we want to call it, but it's obvious we still don't understand why cabohydrate restriction doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics. Today we will attack the first law and tomorrow the second. You'll understand why I disagree with both Eades and Colpo.
The first misconception is the assumption that an association implies cause and effect. The law of energy conservation says that energy is neither created nor destroyed and so the calories we consume will be stored, expended, or excreted. This in turn implies that any change in body weight must equal the difference between the calories we consume and the calories we expend, and thus the positive or negative energy balance. The energy balance equation looks like this:
Change in energy stores = Energy intake – Energy expenditure
The first law of thermodynamics dictates that weight gain – the increase in energy stored as fat and lean-tissue mass – will be accompanied by or associated with positive energy balance, but it does not say that it is caused by a positive energy balance.
There is no arrow of causality in the equation. It is equally possible, without violating this fundamental truth, for a change in energy stores, to be the driving force in cause and effect. Some regulatory phenomenon could drive us to gain weight, which would in turn cause a positive energy balance and thus overeating and/or sedentary behavior. Calories in does equal calories out, but what is “cause” in energy stores is “effect” in calories in/calories out.
All who insist that overeating and or sedentary behavior must be the cause of obesity have done so on the basis of this same fundamental error. They observe correctly that positive energy balance must be associated with weight gain, but then they will assume without justification that positive caloric balance is the cause of weight gain. This simple misconception had led to a century of misguided obesity research.
Construed properly, either of two possibilities is allowed. It may be true that overeating and/or sedentary behavior can cause overweight and obesity, but the evidence and the observations argue otherwise.
We eat more and move less and have less energy to expend because we are driven to get fat by metabolism and hormones. In 1940, Hugo Rony discussed this reverse causation problem in a monograph entitled Obesity and Leanness which is easily the most thoughtful analysis ever written in English on weight regulation in humans.
I told you Rony was my guy. Stay tuned!
When Rony discussed positive energy balance, he compared the situation with what happens in growing children. “The caloric balance is known to be positive in growing children. But children do not grow because they eat voraciously; rather, they eat voraciously because they are growing. They require the excess calories to satisfy the requirements of growth; the result is positive energy balance. The growth is induced by hormones and, in particular by growth hormone. This is the same path of cause and effect that would be taken by anyone who is driven to put on fat by a metabolic or hormonal disorder. The disorder will cause the excess growth – horizontal, in effect, rather than vertical. For every calorie stored as fat or lean tissue, the body will require that an extra calorie either be consumed or conserved.”
As a result, anyone driven to put on fat by such a metabolic or hormonal defect would be driven to excessive eating, physical inactivity, or some combination. Hunger and indolence would be side effects of such hormonal defect, merely facilitating the drive to fatten. They would not be the fundamental cause.
Positive caloric balance would be regarded as the cause of fatness when fatness is artificially produced in a normal person or animal by forced excessive feeding or forced rest, or both. However, obesity develops spontaneously; some intrinsic abnormality seems to induce the body to establish caloric balance leading to fat accumulation. Positive caloric balance would then be a result, rather than a cause of the condition.
An obvious example is pregnancy when women are driven to fatten by hormonal changes. This drive induces hunger and lethargy as a result. The mother’s weight loss afterwards may be regulated by hormonal changes just as it appears to be in animals.
What’s very strange is the failure to grasp the fact that both hunger and sedentary behavior can be driven by a metabolic hormonal disposition to grow fat, just as a lack of hunger and the impulse to engage in physical activity can be driven by a metabolic-hormonal disposition to grow fat, just as a lack of hunger and the impulse to engage in physical activity can be driven by a metabolic hormonal disposition to burn calories rather than store them.
Obesity researchers will acknowledge that growth of the skeletal bones and muscle tissue is determined by genetic inheritance and driven by hormonal regulation, and that this growth will induce the necessary positive caloric balance to fuel it. But they see no reason to believe that a similar process drives the growth of fat tissue.
Eventually, those driven to fattening achieve energy balance but only at an excessive weight and with an excessive amount of body fat. The essential question is what are the metabolic and hormonal deviations that drive this fattening process? When we have that answer, we will know what causes obesity.
As we’ve discussed, obesity is associated with all the physiological abnormalities of metabolic syndrome and all the attendant chronic diseases of civilization. For this reason, public-health authorities now assume that obesity causes or exacerbates these conditions. The alternative logic, with the causality reversed, implies a different conclusion. The same metabolic-hormonal disorder that drives us to fatten also causes metabolic syndrome and the attendant chronic diseases of civilization.
Tune in tomorrow when we’ll tackle the second law of thermodynamics, pages 296-298."
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In other words, correlation does not equal causation. This means that the dietary advice given in the original post is flawed and bound to fail.
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