Ok, I've started watching this. Two minutes in, he's already irritated me hugely. He characterizes obesity as "diet and exercise" - which is the flawed premise that is driving all of the public health advice and the research in this area - that obesity is the result of eating too much and moving too little. Taubes would say (and I agree) that he has the arrow of causality pointed the wrong way. We don't gain weight because we're eating too much. We eat too much because our body is storing fuel as fat. And it's doing that because of complex metabolic processes which are driven by our food environment.

Ok, now at five minutes in, he's saying that smokers are thinner because ... why? He doesn't say. It doesn't seem to interest him at all. What is happening that makes smokers thinner? Do they exercise more? Seems unlikely. Maybe this guy thinks that smokers satisfy their oral fixation with cigarettes rather that candy?

Within the first five minutes of his talk he mentions something that may blow a hole in his premise that obesity is the result of poor behaviors, and he doesn't seem to even be curious. Does smoking effect fat metabolism in some way? And what does that say about the underlying causes of obesity?

Here's a study from 2001: http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v2.../0801654a.html Nicotine acts directly on the fat cell to break down fats.

Nicotine effects metabolism. As do many antipsychotics. What effects metabolism effects how fuel (food) is partitioned. Is it stored or burned?

The fact that obesity is accompanied by increased rates of certain diseases doesn't mean that obese causes those diseases. I would argue that obesity and those diseases are caused by our tainted food supply. But the political will to say so isn't there because there's much money to be made in certain quarters by maintaining the status quo. In fact if I were a conspiracy theorist (which I'm not) I'm might say the whole thing is a plot. The food and agicultural industries make us sick. Then big pharm gives us drugs.

Telling a fat person to lose weight so he'll be healthier is simply stupid. Every fat person I know wants to be thin. There's plenty of motivation. Being fat is unattractive, uncomfortable, and unhealthy. Furthermore it opens you up to public ridicule and blame. If it were as easy as eating less and moving more, there would be a lot fewer fat people.