> If that gets in the way of nutrition, taste wins every time.

It's actually worse than that. A major current research thread is on the low-level mechanisms of "food reward" and the interaction of the brain and obesity. For example, Stephan Guyenet at the University of Washinton researches this area[1]. Even if nutrition is fine, hyper-palatable foods[2] can have a negative impact on health for a variety of reasons. In good part, they basically make it impossible to avoid overconsumption, but there are other implications being studied. Check out Guyenet's blog and twitter feed for references on this developing area. (N.B.: The work that Guyenet does and references isn't always the most accessible or easily interpretable in some cases. He's emphatically not a top source if you're just looking to learn a high level approach towards improving your diet.)

[1] example blog post: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2013/02/food-reward-fr...

[2] The idea of "hyper-palatability" refers to engineered button-pressing of the human brain by modern processed foods and food ingredients. It doesn't mean "food that tastes good", of which there's a world's variety that this moniker doesn't apply to.

Do you have a better source than someone's blog?

Gueynet regularly cites his own and others' peer-reviewed, published research via his blog and twitter account. He also reviews research results, which is valuable to nonspecialists trying to gain context in a new field. My intent in posting his blog was as a convenient reference to the larger body of work that he authors and cites.

Let me expound on that: with a few exceptions, most scholarly papers on diet, metabolism, gut function and disorders, metabolic syndrome, etc. are difficult to digest in isolation. Interpreting and critically reviewing new results often requires a large amount of domain knowledge and context by way of other research results.

"Typically [smart people] live in their heads. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. It’s a way of getting their head to meetings."

> still looked healthier than this guy

What makes you think he's unhealthy? Because he has whiter complexion and he isn't bulky?

I am wondering the same thing. For all I know, the guy might have bones of adamantium, or bones so weak that they barely support his weight; a resting heart rate of 35, or 95...The only thing I can tell from the color of his neck and arms is he is an indoor person. His build looks fine to me.

> isn't bulky?

What? He looks a bit chunky to me. Does he list his height / weight anywhere?

(Yes, I'm aware that BMI is flawed. You have olympic athletes with almost no body fat but 'obese' BMIs. This guy? He's no athlete.)

Chunky? You should travel to the Midwest and Southern USA. It might blow your mind.

BMI is very flawed as a measure of any imaginable health outcome. You'd be better served to ask about blood pressure, pulse, blood glucose, albumin, etc.

This is the scary thing about obesity. Bariatric patients skew reality. People weighing over 500 pounds are obese; people over 250 pounds are now just overweight. The perfectly healthy "curvy" is now applied to people who are not just curvy, but very overweight, and sometimes in the obese range of overweight.

I am wrong to call him chunky. (Although I do wonder if he's a thin-fat person, with all the fat around internal organs. But this is just noodling, and has nothing to do with anything he's said.)

And I strongly agree about your BMI comment. I should have been a bit more careful - BMI is only useful as a guide that a person may be overweight. (If that person doesn't do any kind of exercise.)

He's 6'3 190. He's lost a health amount of weight since starting the diet and has maintained the 190 level for a while.