[frankc]

Part of the point here is that you don't know you daily caloric burn. It's not even possible to measure the calories in the food you eat precisely enough so that you could actually maintain weight homeostasis by literally counting calories. And if you get it wrong by even 20 calories a day? In 20 years you will gain over 40 pounds, by the calories in/calories out way of thinking. Clearly there must be some homeostatic mechanism controlling the weight in humans and other animals in the same way that homeostatic mechanisms control your body temperature. The Taubes argument in a nutshell is that excess carb consumption, especially fructose because of how it causes fatty liver issues, throws that homeostasis out of whack.