What if the focus on calories and energy balance is simply wrong?

After more than a three-decade increase, calorie consumption in the United States has plateaued or decreased since 2000, a new analysis concludes. But obesity rates have increased by more than one-third since then, to an astounding 42 percent of the population today. This paradox can’t be simply explained by our sedentary lifestyles — in fact, Americans have become somewhat more physically active over the past 20 years.

So what if the focus on calories and energy balance is simply wrong, reversing cause and effect? Writing in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition this week, my co-authors — researchers, physicians, public health experts — and I argue that overeating isn’t the primary cause of obesity. Instead, the process of gaining weight causes us to overeat.

This is a different model of obesity, the carbohydrate-insulin model. This theory puts the blame for rising levels of obesity on the processed, fast-digesting carbs that flooded our diets during the low-fat diet craze — white bread, white rice, prepared breakfast cereals, potato products and sugary foods. It posits that consumption of these carbohydrates raises insulin levels too high and produces other hormonal changes that program our body to store extra fat.

[wapo.st]