As I said way back in 2011, in Eat Like A Predator, "Abstracts and conclusions often misrepresent the data."  It's reasonably easy to design an experiment to get the results you want...and if you don't, it's easy to "adjust" the data and move the goalposts until you do.

One future installment of this series will cover the topic of "When is a calorie a calorie?" i.e. "Under what circumstances do dietary changes not matter?"  One of the main ones seems to be "Swapping carbohydrate for fats that aren't coconut oil (i.e. high in MCTs) doesn't seem to change things unless you're at the extremes of carb or fat consumption."

JS

and in one case "so long as you equate 19% greater weight loss as insignificant"
wow i wish i could get an "insignificant wage increase" of 19%!!!

1. No matter how many white swans you cherry-pick, I've already posted over a dozen black swans -- so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove.

2. None of the studies you've linked contradict any of the studies I've described in this series.  They only prove that variations in macronutrient balance, away from the extremes, don't change much.  (For instance, the lowest carbohydrate content of any diet was 25%.)

3. The sentences you cherry-picked often don't mean what you imply they mean.

However, I thank you for bringing these studies to my attention, because they'll be useful in a future installment about metabolic individuality!

Let's go through them one by one.

The first study you posted (McDevitt 2000) fed subjects a normal, high-carb diet -- and only then overfed the subjects with fat or carbohydrate.  Result: the macro percentages didn't change all that much.

Quote: "The control diets provided 48% of energy as carbohydrate, 40% as fat, and 12% as protein. The [carb-overfeeding] diets provided 50% of energy as carbohydrate, 42% as fat, and 8% as protein. The [fat-overfeeding] diet provided 32% of energy as carbohydrate, 60% as fat, and 8% as protein."

Furthermore, it didn't even measure weight gain or loss!  All they did was force the subjects into a room for five days, force them to exercise identically, and measure both heat production and RER to approximate fuel usage.

Anticlimactic result, which doesn't contradict any of the studies I've cited: changing your diet form 50% carb/42% fat to 32% carb/60% fat doesn't significantly change how much energy you expend over five days.  Raise your hand if you're surprised.

Next, Lammert 2000.

"In phase 3, the C-group received 78 % of energy as carbohydrates, 11 % of energy as protein and 11 % of energy as fat, while the F-group received 58 % of energy as fat, 11 % of energy as protein and 31 % of energy as carbohydrate."  So we're talking about the difference between a high-carb diet and a moderate-carb diet.

Anticlimactic result, which doesn't contradict any of the studies I've cited: changing your diet from 78% carb/11% fat to 31% carb/58% fat doesn't significantly change average weight gain.  Again, raise your hand if you're surprised.

Next, Golay 1996.  I don't have access to fulltext, but the abstract tells us enough.

"The patients were assigned to one of two groups that received either a low (25% CHO, n = 31) or a high (45% CHO, n = 37) carbohydrate hypocaloric diet (5.0 MJ/d, 1200 Kcal/d)." 

First, I note that the 25% carb group lost 19% more weight than the 45% carb group, though that wasn't deemed "significant".

Anticlimactic result, which doesn't contradict any of the studies I've cited: changing your diet from 45% to 25% carb produces a 19% improvement in weight loss, which the authors don't believe to be statistically significant.  

Finally, Davy 2001.

Again, the diets weren't all that different: "The specific macronutrient composition (protein, fat, carbohydrate) of each diet, as a percentage of total energy intake, was 15/30/55 for the mixed diet condition (M), 15/60/25 for the high-fat diet condition (HF), and 15/15/70 for the high-carbohydrate condition (HC)."

And again, this study didn't even measure weight gain or loss: it measured RER using indirect calorimetry.

Anticlimactic result, which doesn't contradict any of the studies I've cited: changing your diet from 70% carb/15% fat to 25% carb/60% fat doesn't significantly change how much energy you expend over 24 hours.  Again, raise your hand if you're surprised.

Finally, I've already addressed Buchholz 2004 in the comments to Part I, but I'll expand on them here.

Let me highlight these sentences, because they're so monumentally self-contradictory – and highlight the deficiencies of the calorie model so well.  Quote: "Diets high in protein and/or low in carbohydrate produced an ≈2.5-kg greater weight loss after 12 wk of treatment. Neither macronutrient-specific differences in the availability of dietary energy nor changes in energy expenditure could explain these differences in weight loss."

In other words, the CICO model, while trivially true in the physics sense, is completely inadequate to explain observed reality.  (By which I mean “Attempting to adjust the “calorie”-based calculations for all the factors I discussed in my article is apparently, in practice, impossible.”)

“As such, a calorie is a calorie.”

Wait, what?  They've just admitted that it isn't.

“Further research is needed to identify the mechanisms that result in greater weight loss with one diet than with another.”

And now they admit again that the calorie-based model fails to explain observed reality.

Conclusions:

1. Your references show that varying carb content between 75% and 31%, while keeping protein content constant (between 8% and 15%), doesn't have a significant effect. 

2. These references do not contradict any of the citations in this series.

Result: My points stand.

Catherine:

Read my reply above.  Luther isn't making the point he believes he's making.

JS

I'll just leave these here:

Macronutrient disposal during controlled overfeeding with glucose, fructose, sucrose, or fat in lean and obese women.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10919929

Conclusion: Short term study found no significant difference in fat balance during controlled overfeeding with fat, fructose, glucose, or sucrose.

Effects of isoenergetic overfeeding of either carbohydrate or fat in young men.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11029975

Conclusion: Fat storage during overfeeding of isoenergetic amounts of diets rich in carbohydrate or in fat was not significantly different

Weight-loss with low or high carbohydrate diet?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8968851

Conclusion:Neither diet offered a significant advantage when comparing weight loss or other, metabolic parameters over a 12 w period.

Regulation of macronutrient balance in healthy young and older men.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11673772
Conclusion: Results suggest that the ability to adjust macronutrient oxidation to changes in diet composition is maintained in older men and, thus, is unlikely to contribute to the increased susceptibility to weight gain and obesity development that accompanies aging.

Finally:

Is a calorie a calorie?http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/5/899S.long
Conclusion:
We conclude that a calorie is a calorie. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, this is clear because the human body or, indeed, any living organism cannot create or destroy energy but can only convert energy from one form to another. In comparing energy balance between dietary treatments, however, it must be remembered that the units of dietary energy are metabolizable energy and not gross energy. This is perhaps unfortunate because metabolizable energy is much more difficult to determine than is gross energy, because the Atwater factors used in calculating metabolizable energy are not exact. As such, our food tables are not perfect, and small errors are associated with their use.

In addition, we concede that the substitution of one macronutrient for another has been shown in some studies to have a statistically significant effect on the expenditure half of the energy balance equation. This has been observed most often for high-protein diets. Evidence indicates, however, that the difference in energy expenditure is small and can potentially account for less than one-third of the differences in weight loss that have been reported between high-protein or low-carbohydrate diets and high-carbohydrate or low-fat diets. As such, a calorie is a calorie. Further research is needed to identify the mechanisms that result in greater weight loss with one diet than with another.

Nuts & cheeses are two low carb foods that don't provide much satiety. That might have something to do with them being more easily stored as fat. That's a good question.

(and if the metabolic ward studies you're refering to are those used by AC to bash Eades with you need to read Eades' reply because his explanations are very good.)

But he's still a calorie balance supremacist. If your audience is bodybuilders I can understand because they'll need to count them to achieve the results they want but as we all know that's not really going to help the obese. He dismissed Gary Taubes/GCBC without having read it if I remember correctly (I rarely read what he writes he's too much of a troll). I also think it was on his website that I saw the definitive energy balance equation and it was something like 20 pages long. When you invest so much time & energy into proving something chances are you're not going to let go of it, no matter how intelligent you are.

Thanks to an alert reader, I now have access to the fulltext.  However, I do enjoy reading Suppversity.

sylvie:

As I said in my interview with Jimmy Moore, "Yes, calories count...but they don't all count the same." 

The people in the nut study were heavily restricting their food intake...so it doesn't mean you can just blithely eat all the nuts you can stomach.  (Not everyone is Sam Feltham, a young, fit male who is very resistant to weight gain.)  What it does mean is that a "calorie" of nuts is, apparently, less fattening than a "calorie" of hearthealthywholegrains.

Also note that there is a huge difference between whole almonds and (for instance) nut butters!  Nut butters probably count as a powdered food (the powder just sticks together due to the oil).

I'm not sure why cheese has such a stalling effect: I suspect the insulin response is related.  Yes, it's matched by a glucagon surge...but insulin still inhibits lipolysis.  And if your metabolic flexibility is impaired, you're still going to have trouble switching back to fat-burning afterward. 

There might also be something to the idea of casomorphins: I don't believe people have such issues with whey protein, even though it's just as insulinogenic AFAIK.  Is ricotta "cheese" stalling, too?  That would be an interesting experiment to try, because ricotta isn't actually cheese at all -- it's pressed whey.

Do note that these are educated guesses on my part!

JS

On a separate note, do you know of any scientific evidence or theories supporting the idea of why cheese or low carb dairy would cause people to stall in their weight loss? Even in the paleosphere, people seem to think that it's a CICO issue, even though plenty of individuals ensure that they're not 'overeating' cheese. The insulin theory doesn't seem to hold either, given that the insulin response is matched by a glucagon response. Your thoughts would be welcome!

"Some people swear by IIFYM, but as far as I can tell it's only because they want to "get away with" eating junk food, as if gaining a few pounds is the only problem eating McDonald's will cause them."

If you're young, male, and only overweight by 20-30 pounds, just about any diet plan will work for you.  Unfortunately, this is also the age group that gets most evangelistic about their own diet plan (which is usually the first one they've tried) once they lose that first 15-20.

And yes, aging sneaks up on you!  The problem most people don't realize is that looking old and feeling old are the product of decades of life choices...we can stop ourselves from aging as quickly, but we can't reverse much of the damage.  It's like most diseases: the best way to beat cancer is to not get it.  Etc.

JS

>What proportion of calories from carbs? If you're only eating 15-20% max, and you're working
> out intensely, you can usually get enough nutrition from the 80% protein, fat, and green
>veggies (if you eat real food) so that the carbs can be junk and it doesn't matter much.

>However, if the IIFYMs are talking about a high-carb diet, then I suspect they're far from
> optimal: in addition to the nutritional issues, fructose, glucose, and lactose aren't equivalent.
> Then there is the GI difference. And if they're talking about a 30% micellar casein/30% seed
> oil/40% Mexican Coke diet, well, that's almost exactly the diet scientists use to make mice and
> rats obese as rapidly as possible…

I have seen various plans in terms of carbs. Generally speaking the conventional wisdom I've seen is that when bulking up, eat roughly 1:1 carbs to fat alongside lots of protein, while the wisdom in cutting is to keep your carbs inversely proportional, either high fat/low carb or low fat/high carb.

As for myself, I eat roughly 1g/1g fat to carbs. I usually end up getting more calories from fat than carbs by about 2:1.

Some people swear by IIFYM, but as far as I can tell it's only because they want to "get away with" eating junk food, as if gaining a few pounds is the only problem eating McDonald's will cause them.

That crap doesn't fly with me, I insist on being fanatically healthy even if I can "get away without it." Unlike them I insist on having organs that still work when I'm old.

What proportion of calories from carbs?  If you're only eating 15-20% max, and you're working out intensely, you can usually get enough nutrition from the 80% protein, fat, and green veggies (if you eat real food) so that the carbs can be junk and it doesn't matter much.

However, if the IIFYMs are talking about a high-carb diet, then I suspect they're far from optimal: in addition to the nutritional issues, fructose, glucose, and lactose aren't equivalent.  Then there is the GI difference.  And if they're talking about a 30% micellar casein/30% seed oil/40% Mexican Coke diet, well, that's almost exactly the diet scientists use to make mice and rats obese as rapidly as possible...

I haven't watched the video since it's 30 minutes, but I'm familiar with the idea: you need to refeed periodically to fool your body into thinking it's not starving so that it'll continue to let go of fat stores.  Sub-10% bodyfat land is where you're fighting uphill against leptin dynamics and a host of other issues.

Alex:

There's snake oil at every extreme -- including the HCLF/raw vegan extreme, where only fat can make you fat, as well as the keto extreme, where only carbs can make you fat.

Unfortunately the ELMM/"calories are all that matter" extreme is mainstream nutritional dogma at this point, whereas the other beliefs are small fringes.

My point is simple: Calories count -- but they don't all count the same.  This is just one reason why paying attention to the type and quality of the "calories" you eat is likely to be far more productive than simply trying to reduce their quantity.  (Other reasons include their differing effects on hunger and satiety, which is usually the biggest factor, and the awkward fact from Part V that we can't estimate our intake accurately enough to get results consistent with "calorie math".)

grinch:

I find it unlikely that mice and rats (particularly rats) can produce wildly varying results, but humans are perfect bomb calorimeters. 

Now, I haven't gone through every study AC cites (I assume you're quoting him because of your use of his trademark phrase "tightly controlled metabolic ward studies"), but from what I recall, none of the studies in question looked at situations similar to the mouse/rat studies I've quoted, e.g. powdered vs. regular chow (Part II), a diet of 2/3 coconut oil (Part III), swapping SFA for n-6 PUFA (this part)...and if anyone wants to dispute the higher TEF of protein, feel free to fight with the 34 citations in Bosse and Dixon 2012, from Part IV.  (I don't think AC disputes this...just whether the effect is large enough to be important in practice.)

Nor do I recall any of those studies dealing with situations similar to those from the human studies I quoted, such as the "carbs at dinner" study from Part II, or the diet of 1/2 almonds (Part III)...the second of which counts as a "metabolic ward" study, since the patients were inpatients at a hospital!  ("Metabolic ward" just means "the part of the hospital where they keep people in metabolism studies"...it's not a magical guarantee that no one cheats.)

Finally, I note that there are studies showing dramatically different effects from different macros, e.g. Kekwick and Pawan...which AC finds his own reasons to not include in his dataset.

Please note: given what I know at this time, I think the effect of different foods on hunger and appetite is likely to be more important in practice than their divergence from the Atwater factors.  However, the multi-decade emphasis on "calories"/ELMM has proven to be remarkably ineffective, and I prefer to let reality guide me towards my hypotheses.  For instance, did America experience a massive failure of willpower contemporaneous with the Reagan inauguration?  I see no evidence for that.

JS

I don't think anyone denies there may be a significant metabolic advantage to one diet over another in rats, but it doesn't seem to be the case in humans.