I'm not denying that there are other reasons to eat a diet with greater nutritional density, but trying to convince people that CICO is wrong is far more harmful than trying to convey that it is literally the most important factor in trying to modify your weight.
If you want to make changes in your life, you need to know the right things to measure, and your caloric intake relative to how your weight changes is the single most important factor for people trying to lose weight. If you're not even doing that, it's unlikely you'll succeed, as millions of people who struggle with their weight will understand.
Once you've convinced people of the value of that, it then becomes more productive to go into the value of high protein intake and strength training to further improve body composition, the importance of eating a diet centered around fruits and vegetables, etc.
For people that are severely overweight, getting their weight down will have the highest impact on their health.
>Nobody is suggesting that CICO and the insulin theory are mutually exclusive;
Taubes literally argued this in the paragraph where he quoted the biochemistry text.
Nobody is suggesting that CICO and the insulin theory are mutually exclusive; what the author is saying is that CICO is a profoundly unhelpful statement for people looking to lose weight, improve their health, or reverse diabetes/heart disease.
> Taubes would be hard pressed to explain how those subsisting on high carb, low fat, low protein diets that fail to meet their caloric needs in famine-afflicted regions remain thin.
Thin doesn't mean healthy. We're talking about disease, not necessarily weight, and you can have metabolic syndrome even if you're considered 'thin'. Most people who are thin with a poor diet have visceral fat (fat around the organs) which is far worse than subcutaneous fat (as a risk factor).