Well, people can defend carbs until they turn blue in the face, but I'm afraid I'm going to go by what my own long term self observation has clearly shown me: strictly controlling carbs enables me to lose weight, and eating carbs sets me on a road to slow but steady gain and out of control eating. At this point in my life I cannot lose weight if I'm eating many carbs. Period. You'll not convince me otherwise, I know what I experience no matter what any "expert" may say.

Perhaps caloric intake plays somewhat of a role somewhere: when I'm eating under 20g carbs per day, my appetite is very muted and I naturally keep calories fairly low. That said, in the past I ate low calories with carbs included and I was hungry all the time, didn't lose easily, and felt horrible. So obviously, it's not all about calories.

I once acquired a severely underweight horse. To help her gain, in addition to her usual hay I gave her what seemed like a very modest amount of oats with a bit of molasses on them, maybe a couple of 1-cup scoops per day, and mind you, this was for a 1,000 pound horse so that amount really was quite small relatively speaking. She put weight back at an astounding rate, probably within a few weeks she was back to a normal weight.

I know humans aren't horses, but dang, in addition to sugars, those grain based foods do the same to me. Eating them, I gain at a fairly good clip. The connection is too stark to not believe.

Actually, that's even more convincing. In terms of anatomy and natural history, horses are undoubtedly herbivores. There's arguments about humans, but, whether you believe meat is bad for us or not or we're meant to eat it or not, we're undoubtedly more capable of handling it (even if we 'aren't supposed to') than a horse.
AND a horse, as a grazing animal, is undoubtedly more likely to have subsisted on wild grains than pre-historic humans did.


So if sugar and grains can make an underweight horse gain weight, is it any wonder they can easily make humans fat?

Not to mention, as you said, if 1 cup of oatmeal with molasses affects a 1000lb horse that way it should be a clue that "moderation" of sugar means a much smaller amount that most people think since, you'd think 1 cup of oats and molasses to a horse would feel like 1 Jolly Rancher to a 150 lb person.

When I was an omnivorously reading child, it was established FACT that early humans worked hard for their meat, and ate as much as they could get. We evolved our large brains because we upped our protein, which made us better hunters. In fact, giant mammals became extinct because humans got so good at eating them!

So I'm sure the "we weren't meant to eat meat" stuff I hear is simply "propaganda from the birdseed brigade" as Gnolls.org has it.

Yes, I know that. It's total BS, but as someone who is a scientist herself I can tell you from observational study (aka: my life) that there are a lot of people who really don't give a crap about facts.
So I've gotten to where I'm more non-comittal about it unless I'm in the mood for an argument. Notice I said there's arguments about it, not that they were convincing or widely accepted.
It's like saying there's arguments about whether evolution is real. There are arguments. Depressing fact: an estimated 50% of Americans don't believe in evolution., but among scientists there's really no debate.
What can I say? I'm a little jaded.