Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda, coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring, preservatives, etc.)
If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish and lean meat.
That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch up to modern science. Salt especially; current science strongly indicates that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science.
Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty good.
Of course, I wouldn't expect a lot of people on HN to agree, thus the down-votes.
A lot of the food industry is based on pumping the salt, sugar and fat so that we eat/buy more. So people focused on making money are more likely to side with Taubes (even if he's wrong) than with Kessler.
If I could down vote this thread, I would.
Where he differs, he has a lot more science to back it up.
This quote is taken from the wiki article on Gary Taubes
"Although Taubes has no formal training in nutrition or medicine, his book was praised as "raising interesting and valuable points" by Dr. Andrew Weil, while Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Jillian Michaels who appeared on the same program disagreed with Taubes on many questions. [6]"
I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an inefficient tool for weight loss.
Taubes is against refined carbs (OK, that does make sense) but is a bit of a nutter on other causes and solutions to obesity.
The science of the book is sound. And he is right about exercise: it's good for fitness (as in muscle) and other health reasons, but for weight loss is almost useless by itself. The reason is insulin, which signal the body to store, not use, energy.
Of course you could calorie-count people on a high carb diet and whip them to exercise and they will probably lose weight. But you will also destroy their health and they will regain all of its former weight (and then some) later. This is documented and is all in the book too.
I suspect that if we went back to the diet before there was fast-food, people would be eating more flavorful (a.k.a. fatty) meat than lean meat.