One of the reasons I am against government regulating our food (taxing sodas, banning Happy Meals), other than the fact that they have no constitutional authority to do so, is that "sin foods" don't cause obesity. Consuming more calories than you expend does. It's called the conservation of energy. When you ingest food, almost 100% of it is utilized by the body (save for some fiber only part of which is converted to energy). All food is broken down in the digestive tract and is used by the body immediately and if there is too much it is stored for later use. Fat is an extremely efficient energy storage medium as 1 pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories (kcal actually). So if you happen to be fat, you will have to expend 3,500 more calories than you take in to lose 1 pound of bodyfat, or about 500 calories a day if you want to lose 1 pound per week (an optimal amount for most people). A nutrition professor wanted to prove (it's been done many, many times before with such foods as McDonalds) that calories matter, not food composition (carbs versus protein versus fat): Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds. The result was a forgone conclusion:
Tips Nutrition professor loses 27 pounds on Twinkie diet Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks,
