I don’t think I can respond to everything in your comment, but let me try to address the main point. As I understand, you say that something is left unexplained by the “Calories in, Calories out” paradigm. That something is explained by your question,
Why did the “set point” go up, permanently?
I think the most likely explanation is simply that modern food is tastier than the more bland food eaten in the past. “Taste” here should be interpreted as capturing all dimensions of the satisfaction of eating, including texture, mouthfeel, and aftertaste. There is also a simple explanation for why typical food has gotten tastier over time; namely, food science has gotten better, corporations have become more efficient at producing and marketing processed foods, and consumer incomes have gotten higher—thus enabling more access and greater choice.
This explanation also perfectly predicts your long paragraph addressing possible causes. Is it fat? Carbs? High-glycemic index foods? Not enough grains? I ask: why couldn’t it be all those things at once?
If the reason why we eat more is because food has gotten tastier, then we should also expect the “cause” to be multifaceted. After all, most people don’t think that there’s only “one thing” that makes food taste good. Taste is more complicated than that, and varies between people.
Reducing the question of “why are we getting obese?” to “why do foods taste good?” doesn’t solve the problem, of course—we still don’t have a full theory of why food tastes good. But, in my opinion, if it’s correct, then it totally deconfuses the proximate mechanism here.
In that sense, I think my CO2 analogy holds quite well. There are many reasons why people omit CO2: electricity, temperature control, transportation etc. And as we’ve gotten richer, those justfications have become more salient, as people can afford to purchase service that provide those benefits, omitting CO2 as a byproduct. Simply knowing this doesn’t mean you’ve solved climate change, of course, but it gets you a lot further than “Why are people burning more CO2 than before? I don’t know; could be anything.”
Never be too sure.
I don’t think I can respond to everything in your comment, but let me try to address the main point. As I understand, you say that something is left unexplained by the “Calories in, Calories out” paradigm. That something is explained by your question,
I think the most likely explanation is simply that modern food is tastier than the more bland food eaten in the past. “Taste” here should be interpreted as capturing all dimensions of the satisfaction of eating, including texture, mouthfeel, and aftertaste. There is also a simple explanation for why typical food has gotten tastier over time; namely, food science has gotten better, corporations have become more efficient at producing and marketing processed foods, and consumer incomes have gotten higher—thus enabling more access and greater choice.
This explanation also perfectly predicts your long paragraph addressing possible causes. Is it fat? Carbs? High-glycemic index foods? Not enough grains? I ask: why couldn’t it be all those things at once?
If the reason why we eat more is because food has gotten tastier, then we should also expect the “cause” to be multifaceted. After all, most people don’t think that there’s only “one thing” that makes food taste good. Taste is more complicated than that, and varies between people.
Reducing the question of “why are we getting obese?” to “why do foods taste good?” doesn’t solve the problem, of course—we still don’t have a full theory of why food tastes good. But, in my opinion, if it’s correct, then it totally deconfuses the proximate mechanism here.
In that sense, I think my CO2 analogy holds quite well. There are many reasons why people omit CO2: electricity, temperature control, transportation etc. And as we’ve gotten richer, those justfications have become more salient, as people can afford to purchase service that provide those benefits, omitting CO2 as a byproduct. Simply knowing this doesn’t mean you’ve solved climate change, of course, but it gets you a lot further than “Why are people burning more CO2 than before? I don’t know; could be anything.”