CICO is not 'false', per se, but it's fundamentally misleading and tautological. Yes, people will lose weight on a calorie restricted diet of just twinkies. However, their bodies metabolic rate will decrease gradually to the point where continuing to maintain a caloric deficit will be unsustainable (i.e. a 500 calorie deficit if your basal metabolic rate is only 750 or 1000), at which point they'll stop losing weight, but still be 'skinny fat'. They'll also cause potentially irreparable harm to their liver and pancreas, and if they do manage to sustain it for longer periods, be on the express track for diabetes and heart disease. The difference between eating equivalent calories of twinkies or a salad is that one is a toxic substance and the other isn't. In the same vein, as another poster mentioned above, you can say that a milligram is a milligram, but a milligram of cyanide will kill you while a milligram of water is harmless. That's why more and more people are challenging CICO; it gives you the false sense that replacing meat and vegetables with coke and doritos is harmless as long as they're equivalent calories.

Nobody is suggesting that CICO and the insulin theory are mutually exclusive; what the author is saying is that CICO is a profoundly unhelpful statement for people looking to lose weight, improve their health, or reverse diabetes/heart disease.

> Taubes would be hard pressed to explain how those subsisting on high carb, low fat, low protein diets that fail to meet their caloric needs in famine-afflicted regions remain thin.

Thin doesn't mean healthy. We're talking about disease, not necessarily weight, and you can have metabolic syndrome even if you're considered 'thin'. Most people who are thin with a poor diet have visceral fat (fat around the organs) which is far worse than subcutaneous fat (as a risk factor).