Geoffrey Purcell wrote:
> I didn't say that. Obviosuly, there are always other factors such as obesity gained via food-intolerance to non-palaeo foods like grains, cooked-foods etc. But it is striking how quickly people who do low-carb diets in the short-term, very quickly regain their former weight when readding any carbs. That indicates water-retention as a common cause, if not the only one.
>   
But they don't merely gain water. If I add a certain amount of carbs 
back to my diet, I will retain water to the tune of about 3-5lbs. If I 
kept eating a certain amount of carbs, eventually I would keep putting 
on weight (fat) over and above the water retention until my body 
attained a balance between the flow of fatty acids in and out of my 
cells. Water retention is not the only cause of weight gain, or 
regaining weight after a loss.

I still want to see evidence that obesity is related to cooked foods, 
not type of food. Seriously.
>  re calorie-counting:- Unfortunately, in recent times, scientists have cast very serious doubt on the notion that obesity is solely due to the amount of calories consumed(indeed the calorie myth seems to be more of a vegetarian-insipried myth, rather than a low-carb one). Come to think of it, many low-carb gurus like Taubes dismiss the whole myth re calories being linked directly to obesity:-
>   
Not unfortunately - I think it's fantastic that this has been shown to 
be flawed reasoning/logic. What's unfortunate is that this hasn't caught 
on in the mainstream. And the doubt hasn't been cast just in recent 
times, it's actually never been demonstrated to be true in the first 
place. Even Ancel Keyes demonstrated this with his starvation studies.
>  Nobody is suggesting that eating a cooked diet makes it impossible to lose weight. It just makes it more difficult. And, much like Weston-Price, you are ignoring a rather obvious point, that hunter-gatherer tribes of those days did a huge amount of daily exercise which would have easily got rid of the problem of obesity(plus they endured frequent famine, which would have been a rather important factor, as well!).
>   
By what mechanism does eating a cooked diet make it more difficult to 
lose weight, over and above type of food consumed?

HG tribes did more physical work than agriculturalists? Even if that 
were true, physical activity correlates with obesity but not in the way 
we're told (as in lack of physical activity results in a lack of 
obesity). Generally speaking, the harder you work the more you eat to 
compensate. Also, as far as lack of food goes, this doesn't always go 
hand in hand with a lack of obesity in a population as the metabolism 
naturally slows down to compensate. The Pima, for example, experienced a 
transition from relative abundance to relative poverty over a century 
ago, and along with that a dramatic increase in obesity (and diabetes, 
etc). They did not become more sedentary at this time - they went from 
being both HG and agriculturalists to eventually relying on gov't 
rations for food (lots of sugar, flour). Less calories, about the same 
amount of daily work (esp for the women, who worked more than the men 
and experienced a higher level of obesity than the men did). When food 
was abundant, and it was foods like meat, fat, vegetables etc (both 
cooked and raw, I'd imagine though it's not specified), they were slim. 
When food was scarce and became foods like flour and sugar, etc, they 
became fat and diabetic even though their overall caloric intake had 
decreased.

The Pueblo, on the other hand, were largely sedentary and did not 
experience obesity - it was quite rare.

What I'm saying is simply the evidence does not bear out that the more 
active a people, the less obesity. It is not much of a factor, nor is 
periodic famine or even an ongoing lack of food/low caloric intake. What 
those calories are (where they come from) and how they affect the body 
is more important. Poverty and obesity are frequently seen together in 
various populations both currently and as far back as a over a  century 
ago. And again, it appears to be more related to the TYPE of food 
consumed rather than whether or not it was cooked.
> Lastly, there is actually no real conclusive scientific evidence re the problem of obesity, largely because the calorie-myth is still being peddled with very poor evidence to back it up.
>   
Ugh, agreed...although the hormonal/insulin factor has a lot of solid, 
hard evidence behind it (scientific and anecdotal) and has for a long, 
long time. Very frustrating! And food intolerances as well...god, that's 
barely even considered as a factor in health at all.