Hello everyone, Monica Reinagle here and welcome to the nutrition divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

The nutrition world seems to be split into two warring camps these days. On the one side are those who insist that weight loss is simply a matter of taking in fewer calories than you burn.

This is a somewhat old school view that you're likely to hear from spokespeople

for the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics or the Harvard School of Public Health.

Now taken to its absurd conclusion, this view holds that you can gain weight eating nothing but salad if you eat too much of it.

And by the same token, you could lose weight while eating nothing but twinkies

as long as you don't eat too many.

Not that anyone from the Academy of Nutrition

and Dietetics or Harvard are suggesting that you do that. In the other camp are

those who insist that calories don't matter. It's the type of food you choose that determines

whether or not you gain or lose weight, and not how much of it you eat.

This camp includes folks like Gary Taub's Robert Lustig and David Ludwig.

These guys argue that calories from some foods, specifically sugar and grains,

cause you to gain weight more quickly than the same amount of calories

from protein and fat. Taken to its absurd conclusion, this view holds that you can

eat as much as you want without gaining weight as long as you avoid those bad foods.

This issue has become a sort of litmus test.

A lot of people want to know which camp I belong to so that they can decide whether I'm full of beans or not.

Well, as my friend Jose once quipped, there are two kinds of people in the world,

those who believe that the world is made up of two kinds of people and those who don't.

I actually believe that both sides have it partially right and that the two views are not

as mutually exclusive as some would have us believe.

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