some amazon reviewers:

Taubes reviews the scientific literature (rather than the popular press) and presents a conclusion that was common knowledge before WWII, and heresy afterward: we get fat because our fat cells have become disregulated and are taking nutrients that should be available to other tissues. Like a tumor, the cells live for themselves rather than in balance with the rest of the body. And since those nutrients aren't available, we become hungry and tired. Therefore we eat more, and move less.
The problem isn't one of gluttony and sloth, as Taubes refers to it, but of hormone balance. Simply put, some people are more sensitive to the hormone effects of insulin, cortisol, and a few other -ols, than other people are. The more sensitive you are, the more you're likely to get fat, and the more fat you're likely to get, in the presence of even small amounts of carbohydrate -- and in the absence of enough fat.

Taubes rejects the old "calories-in/calories-out" theory of fat accumulation. You remember the equation: eat too many calories and you get fat, or fail to burn up enough calories with metabolism and exercise, and you get fat. To lose fat, eat less and exercise more. [He admits it has at least a little validity.] We've operated under that theory for the last half century, but keep getting fatter and fatter. So the theory must be wrong on the face of it. Is there a better one?

Here is Taubes's. The hormone in charge of fat strorage is insulin; it works to make us fatter, building fat tissue. If you've got too much fat, you must have too much insulin action. And what drives insulin secretion from your pancreas? Dietary carbohydrates, especially refined carbs such as sugars, flour, cereal grains, starchy vegetables (e.g., corn, beans, rice, potatoes), liquid carbs. These are the "fattening carbs." Dozens of enzymes and hormones are at play either depositing fat into tissue, or mobilizing the fat to be used as energy. Any regulatory derangement that favors fat accumulation will CAUSE gluttony (overeating) or sloth (inactivity). So it's not your fault. Cut back on carb consumption to lower your fat-producing insulin levels, and you turn fat accumulation into fat mobilization.

Before you write off Taubes as a fly-by-night crackpot, note that he's received three Science-in-Society Journalism Awards from the National Association of Science Writers. He's a respected, professional science writer.

Heres an example to illustrate how hormones control growth of tissues. Consider the transformation of a skinny 11-year-old girl into a voluptuous woman of 18. Various hormones make her grow and accumulate fat and other tissues in the places we now see curves. The hormones make her eat more, and they control the final product. The girl has no choice. Same with our adult fat tissue, but with a different mix of hormones.

I like what he also says about animals in the wild:

One way to get around this is to assume that we overeat by this trivial amount for a few years on end and then we realize we’ve put on five or ten pounds – maybe our clothes no longer fit well or we’ve had to let out the belt a notch or two – and then we decide to undereat every day for however long it takes to make up for it. So now we walk away from the table hungry until all is back to leanness. But then how do animals do it? They don’t have mirrors or clothes to tell them they’re getting fat, and the world is full of animals that have plenty of food available all year round, plenty of opportunity to overeat if they want to and do so long enough to get chubby. And yet the only animals that get chronically obese are those that get their food directly from humans – in the laboratory, in the home or the zoo, or at the dinner table, since humans happen to be animals, too.