I don't know. The only notable carb-cutting effort I took was removing most forms of soda from my diet. But obviously, this is not an isolated action as I've replaced it with water, tea, and coffee. All of those have substantially less calories.
They also have substantially fewer carbs--which is Taubes' point. By reducing your caloric intake you also reduced your carbohydrate intake, and so you don't know which was responsible for your weight loss.
That logic works both ways, though. If you cut soda to kill carbs, couldn't someone say, "Ahh, but you also cut calories! So it could have been that and not the carbs that did it!"
This is is what we call a non-argument. There is insufficient data to make a call either way. The author mentions this, but as I pointed out in other comments on this thread his agenda was clearly to push one hypothesis.
I still don't think that's the case. Ditching soda was one of the first things I did, and I only saw a bit of weight loss. It didn't really start until I started exercising. Which is far more plausible than some sort of miracle diet.
> There is insufficient data to make a call either way. The author mentions this, but as I pointed out in other comments on this thread his agenda was clearly to push one hypothesis.
I think that's actually Taube's main point - the data is insufficient, and the variables aren't being properly controlled. His suggestion that it was in fact the carb-cutting that was the most effective seemed secondary to me.
For the record, I lost 37 pounds in the span of roughly two months by cutting carbs. I ate more than 2000 calories per day (a fairly constant diet of bacon, eggs, cheese, steak, chicken, and broccoli), but kept my carb consumption under 40g of daily carbs for the entire two-month period, and still managed to lose what I consider to be a shocking amount of weight.
