Agreed! It is very difficult to overeat protein and fat. It can be done, 
just not easily. It is extremely easy to overeat carbs, esp when they 
come with fat (ie: cake, ice cream, cookies). When you've just eaten a 
good portion of fatty steak and you're full, if someone offers you, say, 
a lamb chop you'll refuse - someone offers dessert, and somehow, there's 
room...

Taubes mentions  (I'm relating this off the cuff) several overeating 
experiments that were conducted in various places (ie prisons) in which 
participants could easily be induced to eat up to 10,000 calories of 
high carbohydrate foods and still experience hunger later on. The same 
could not be replicated in subjects eating protein/fat - they would 
stare at piles of pork chops and refuse to eat any more.

He also mentiones the starvation studies (Ancel Keys', for example) in 
which healthy men were kept in a metabolic ward and fed about 1,500 
calories of war-rationing types of food (cabbage, potatoes, etc) - they 
suffered enormous physical and mental problems. Other low-cal 
experiments of mainly protein and fat (some far less that 1,500 
calories...closer to 500, 800 cals) did not result in any ill effects. 
Adding about 400 calories of carbohydrate foods (to bring 800 cals of 
protein/fat to 1200 cals of mixed diet) did - ppl felt like they were 
starving.

It's the effect those calories have on your body that counts moreso than 
the amount. It's been replicated numerous times, in humans and lab rats.

Lynnet Bannion wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:41:21 -0600, Kate McEwen 
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Years ago I wrestled with the big portion/low calorie type of diet 
>> consuming
>> mega amounts of boiled cabbage, carrots etc. to try to lose weight 
>> and  guess
>> what happened?  I starved, I craved, I had low energy!  You see
>> low-energy-density foods actually do what they say on the packet!  They
>> provide 'low-energy-density'!  Ingest some fat, even a small amount, 
>> and not
>> only does the fat slow down the absorption of food, thus making you feel
>> fuller for longer, it has a psychological satiety value which cannot be
>> replaced by bucket loads of low-energy-density foods.  Furthermore as 
>> the
>> process of absorption is slowed, carbohydrate induced 'sugar' spikes are
>> reduced.
>
> I agree totally.  It's silly to suggest that since fat has more 
> calories per
> gram, that we can become deluded and eat too many calories of it 
> (though you see
> these statements all the time).  How many people decide when they've 
> had enough to eat by how many ounces of food they have eaten? Answer: 
> Only people on bizarre weight-loss diets, and those are the ones who 
> are deluded, by filling up their bellies with low-energy-density foods 
> and shorting themselves on fat and protein.  However, the body figures 
> out pretty quick that you did not give it what it needed.  Been there, 
> done that.
>
>     Lynnet
>