This is a fascinating article making the case for running shoes against running barefoot with the focus on efficiency and guess what? Light weight shoes beat being barefooted. Believe it or not, it takes less energy to run in sneakers than barefooted.
My own bias, it's intuitive that shoes trump bare feet. It's not just the trauma to your feet. It's the shock all the way up your legs into your pelvis and lower back. For me, shoes as an invention are up there with fire and cooking. Raw food, are you kidding me? Our ancestors had some things really worked out. Why we think we can always reinvent the wheel, I don't know.
