Kevin Hall Answers Low Carb Skepticism
Published 10.11.2016Kevin Hall, researcher at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and author of a recent study partially funded by Gary Taubes' Nutrition Science (NuSi) that disproved Taubes hypothesis about obesity, recently appeared on Jimmy Moore's podcast. I've written about the study and reactions to it previously.
I'm not a fan of Moore's podcast, not least because of the many, many ads he includes in them. I get why he does that, don't misunderstand., but I skip past as best I can (which is ironic, given that I have ads on this site… I like to think they aren't so invasive, but that's a subjective benchmark.) However, this episode was a surprisingly informative one.
Moore asked Hall most of the questions that were tossed up in the low carb community about the study, and Hall answered them all. Moore clearly didn’t like some of the answers, but he had to concede Hall’s argument in more than one case. Hall clearly knows his data, and that made a huge difference. Moore couldn't knock Hall off his stride (though because Hall is agnostic about diet styles, Moore never really tried to).
The identical protein levels of the two diets was highlighted— and that is critical. Low Carb diets, if they work, work because people eating that way find that they spontaneously eat fewer calories. That wasn't allowed in this case, because it was designed to minimize confounders such as caloric differences.
Moore was only interested in the low carb, high fat diet, so the high carb, low fat diet never got described. Moore kept harping on "satiety" which seems to be the next hood for the low carb community. The study wasn't set up to measure satiety, except as a secondary data point. Satiety was not the issue in this study.
The most positive tidbit to come out of this podcast was that more studies based on these experiments are to be published. I knew this from previous coverage, but it was nice to have confirmation.
Bottom Line
The podcast (against all odds) is well worth a listen.Disclaimer
Related writings:
- Confirmed: It's the calories not the carbs
- The Kevin Hall study disproving Taubes is published
- More reactions to the Hall Study
- A Story to be told
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