The following is a cogent explanation of insulin. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-hypothesis-of-obesity.html Explanations about obesity and insulin being popularized by journalists and bloggers to sell diet plans or to promote a counter-culture ideology sometimes sound good on the surface but don't always hold up to a more rigorous scientific analysis.
The usual response from bloggers to such an analysis is a caustic response with plenty of links to anti-establishment websites that are light on facts and heavy on ideology.
I actually think Gueynet is correct on a lot of things, and that Taubes is sometimes wrong and tends to overgeneralize and oversimplify. What I do know is that carb-restricted diets work. They have worked for me, and they have worked for a lot of people who have struggled on calorie-restricted diets where 50% or more of those calories are coming from carbohydrates. Guyenet states this in the opening paragraph of his article. So while Taubes may be wrong on certain things, the general theme of his work, I feel, is mostly accurate. What I agree with Guyenet most on is that insulin is not the only hormone that affects weight gain. However, I feel that perhaps it is the most important, and is the biggest contributor to obesity for most of the population.
