Yes, Krieger claims it's all about calories. At least, I don't see any other logical alternative. The only official positions are either carbs-insulin, or calories-in-out. So if we argue against insulin, we argue in favor of calories and vice verse. The last alternative is that Krieger is not arguing any side but merely arguing for no reason that I can see and that would truly make him incoherent.

Well Patrick, you'll have to point me to that science cuz I just don't see it. I mean, I see some science but it doesn't actually support Krieger's point of view. Like the last study he cited for example. At best, it supports both sides simultaneously. At worst, it opposes his side outright. I see that and I'm no expert. Why doesn't he see it and for all intents and purposes, he's the expert.

Carbs-insulin or calories-in-out ? You think it's a matter of choosing between only these two options?

I think James understands quite well the complexities of obesity and this means that it cannot be relegated to only these two scenarios. He acknowledged that physiology and psychology are interrelated. Which means that what we eat does have an effect on how we feel, including how hungry we feel.

If you think there are two camps and that if we are not in the Carbs-insulin one we are against it, then you will probably miss the big picture while arguing in circle with people.

That was the impression that I got as well. He criticises the attempt to reduce everything to carbs/insulin, and not making the same mistake of reducing everything to calories.

Are you implying there's a third camp? If so, please explain. Krieger is arguing in a bubble and only gets out when he needs to patch holes in his arguments. For example, he thinks it's relevant to cite type 1 diabetics when he talks about satiety and calories, but then does a 180 and thinks it's irrelevant when somebody else talks about caloric deficit and emaciation.

That was an opinion piece; just because the opinions are about science, that doesn't make opinions immediately more serious or credible. That's okay, we are obviously at the stage of competing opinions.

I did not get from his tone and that series that he is suggesting something more subtle than the either/or of "calories-in" or "insulin-carbs" hypotheses. I must be guilty of skimming again.

Just for grins I searched PubMed for human studies on the effect of insulin on appetite. Just to do my own replication of his bullet point number one in the summary (based on the rodent study) Mildly interesting result, for which I thank this thread.

I found a study wherein obese people were measured with MRI for the appetite area of the brain - and responded differently than the non-obese. Krieger's bullet is over simplified - yes, insulin may have a blunting effect on appetite in specific rodents - but that effect is not guaranteed or uniform in humans.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...?tool=pmcentrez

Actually, Krieger makes hugelol mistakes. For example, he claims that:

yet acknowledges that:

Excuse me while I look up the term "cognitive dissonance" for a moment.

If it's about calories, it's always about calories. If it's about insulin, it's always about insulin. That's because the two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. But maybe Krieger is trying to advance a third hypothesis that encompasses aspects of both hypotheses even though it would create glaring obvious in-your-face contradictions like I pointed out above and on his blog repeatedly.

Something I haven't figured out yet. Which one is the calorie hormone? I mean, we have the lipolysis hormone which is primarily insulin, then we have the growth hormone with the same name, then we have one of the anabolic hormones testosterone (there are more), but I have yet to find the calorie hormone. You know, the one that controls calories and puts surplus calories in fat cells and takes them out in times of caloric deficit?

It's funny. Everything in biology is controlled by hormones or enzymes except calories. There must be something truly special about calories for that to be so.

It is known that the brain of obese people (and Zucker rats) is resistant to the appetite-suppressant effect of leptin and insulin, but I reckon the point was that insulin doesn't increase appetite as a lot of people believe.

That's right. And the evidence Krieger cites to support that claim (type 1 diabetics), he now refuses it to support an opposite claim.

If there's one thing we can count on about Krieger, it's that he will always try to use the evidence to support his views and only his views even when the evidence actually opposes his views.

There are no camps. Just a common desire to understand how we function.

The keyword here is "runaway". In the sense that the absence of insulin has an effect too great for the other pathways (that stores fat other than insulin) to prevent the outcome.

You are interpreting what he is saying with your premise that there are camps.

Calorie is just a unit of measurement.

I think he is just trying to say that type 1 diabetics are not a good model to support claims regarding obesity in non type 1 diabetics.

If that is so, then why does he use type 1 diabetics data to support his own claims regarding obesity in non type 1 diabetics?