Recently, a Medical News Today piece has been making the rounds leading readers to believe that calories and the first law of thermodynamics do not matter when it comes to gaining excess weight. The article, and the study that was its impetus, posits that only the intake of highly refined and processed carbohydrates do (this is known as the “carbohydrate-insulin model” - or CIM - of weight gain), despite highly controlled metabolic ward studies at the NIH strongly pointing towards the debunking of such models.