Stirring the Pot: are all calories equal
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Then how come a lot of the vocal low carb proponents are still fat and wear girdles to hide their guts?prettykitty1515 wrote: »"Dr. In recent studies, Dr. Ludwig has shown that high-carbohydrate diets appear to slow metabolic rates compared to diets higher in fat and protein,
Ever hear of the Tukisenta's who eat huge amounts of carbs, or the Kitavans (69% carb diet), or the Ewe Tribe (who eat a diet of basically NOTHING BUT insulin-spiking carbs ... like 90% of the diet) or the traditional Okinawa's (85% carbs).
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What? I don't understand this.TimothyFish wrote: »When it comes to calories you use, no they aren't equal. When it comes to the calories that are above what you need, they are all equal because they all get stored as fat.
Wow! Five pages into this and I'm still being quoted?
What I mean is that though the concept of a food calorie is based on the energy calorie (divided by 1000), the food calorie serves as a shorthand to cover a bunch of other stuff. For example, the 1200 calorie minimum has nothing to do with providing the human body with enough energy to survive. What foods those calories come from is important for a person's health. The nutrients in food get moved around the body and are used as building blocks for various things the cells do. But once our body has enough of those building blocks to do what it needs, all the extra food, no matter how healthy it is, is just stored as fat and the stuff the body doesn't need is flush out of the system.0 -
yopeeps025 wrote: »
Read the article. Do some research. For example: 100 calories from nuts is not what your body gets. 1/5 is lost/not absorbed. Fiber affects the rate calories are asymilated. Which effects your blood sugar, which affects your insulin level, which effects the rate that you store fats... Its not 100 for 100. That is over simplistic.
In a lab setting, sure the heat value is the same. Calorie estimation does not mimic human digestion.0 -
yopeeps025 wrote: »
Read the article. Do some research. For example: 100 calories from nuts is not what your body gets. 1/5 is lost/not absorbed. Fiber affects the rate calories are asymilated. Which effects your blood sugar, which affects your insulin level, which effects the rate that you store fats... Its not 100 for 100. That is over simplistic.
In a lab setting, sure the heat value is the same. Calorie estimation does not mimic human digestion.
That is not really what the article is saying though… in fact, the article doesn't mention blood sugar or insulin levels at any moment.
Regardless, the fact that our body processes foods differently does not mean that calories are not equal. Calories is simply a measure of the energy contained inside a food source. The difference lies in how much of that energy your body can extract from those sources.
I am not sure how make a working analogy, but it's more or less the difference between burning a chunk of wood completely, and a burning chunk of wood that turns into coals and then goes out. There is still energy in the coals, it just wasn't consumed by the fire.
Yes, that is a very clumsy, but unless I go into the laws of thermodynamics (which I would most likely butcher horribly) I am not sure how else to explain it.
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I think it's a pretty good article. It explains in simple terms what many people know (that some foods can make them fatter than others of same calories) even though they don't really know why. Outside the body a calorie is a calorie. Once absorbed by our bodies, a calorie is a calorie. Counting calories via labels or databases leaves out all that goes on between the outside and the absorbed stages.
That was my impression as well. Unfortunately, reading through this discussion it seems that a lot of people either people are misinterpreting the article or not reading it.
The question is, I think, if it really makes a difference. From what I gather from the article, in the end there would be no instance where the amount of calories your body absorbed would be underestimated rather than overestimated. The amount of calories on the label corresponds to the actual amount of calories present in the food it is labelling. (zero calorie products notwithstanding)
So, really, if you are count in calories and eating at a deficit, the only difference that it would make is that eating "unprocessed" foods would create, in fact, a larger deficit than you are aiming at. Thus, you would lose weight faster, because you are absorbing less calories.
It still boils down to CI < CO, really.
I also question if the difference made is really large enough to be significant in humans. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give any clues to that.0 -
GingerbreadCandy wrote: »I also question if the difference made is really large enough to be significant in humans. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give any clues to that.
the amount of calories left in your waste can be measured and accounted for, it isn't huge. Over time it might be significant as a few calories a day is a lot over 10 years.
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TimothyFish wrote: »
What? I don't understand this.TimothyFish wrote: »When it comes to calories you use, no they aren't equal. When it comes to the calories that are above what you need, they are all equal because they all get stored as fat.
Wow! Five pages into this and I'm still being quoted?
What I mean is that though the concept of a food calorie is based on the energy calorie (divided by 1000), the food calorie serves as a shorthand to cover a bunch of other stuff. For example, the 1200 calorie minimum has nothing to do with providing the human body with enough energy to survive. What foods those calories come from is important for a person's health. The nutrients in food get moved around the body and are used as building blocks for various things the cells do. But once our body has enough of those building blocks to do what it needs, all the extra food, no matter how healthy it is, is just stored as fat and the stuff the body doesn't need is flush out of the system.
Is this a fancy way of saying surplus food leads to weight gain? Otherwise, what you're saying doesn't make sense.0 -
As a unit of measure, 1=1, no matter what it is. 1 always equals 1 and will never equal anything else.
That's not correct. It depends on context.
It took Principia Mathematica about 500 pages worth of logical proofs to establish that "1+1=2" - usually. Even then ended up with a circular definition. And if 1 plus 1 being 2 is a "sometimes", then it's not possible that "1 always equals 1".
In what context is 1 = 1 incorrect?
I did pretty well in math, but didn't go so far that 1 did not equal 1.
Is it possible to explain that to someone who wasn't a math major?
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GingerbreadCandy wrote: »I also question if the difference made is really large enough to be significant in humans. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give any clues to that.
the amount of calories left in your waste can be measured and accounted for, it isn't huge. Over time it might be significant as a few calories a day is a lot over 10 years.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/31/7/1149.full.pdf+html
Men were fed a diet that was high in fiber, then low in fiber (12g/day vrs 1g/day). When on the high fiber diet, their feces contained 900 more calories over the course of a week than when they were on the low fiber diet. 900x52 = 46,800 = would be 13 pounds fat difference in a year by making changes in what sort of food people ate (high versus low fiber).0 -
As a unit of measure, 1=1, no matter what it is. 1 always equals 1 and will never equal anything else.
That's not correct. It depends on context.
It took Principia Mathematica about 500 pages worth of logical proofs to establish that "1+1=2" - usually. Even then ended up with a circular definition. And if 1 plus 1 being 2 is a "sometimes", then it's not possible that "1 always equals 1".
In what context is 1 = 1 incorrect?
I did pretty well in math, but didn't go so far that 1 did not equal 1.
Is it possible to explain that to someone who wasn't a math major?
Add 1 banana to 1 banana and you have two bananas. Add 1 drop of water to 1 drop of water and you have....1 drop of water.
There are waaaaaay more weird examples than this in our crazy universe....but that's one that's easy to visualize.
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GingerbreadCandy wrote: »I also question if the difference made is really large enough to be significant in humans. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give any clues to that.
the amount of calories left in your waste can be measured and accounted for, it isn't huge. Over time it might be significant as a few calories a day is a lot over 10 years.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/31/7/1149.full.pdf+html
Men were fed a diet that was high in fiber, then low in fiber (12g/day vrs 1g/day). When on the high fiber diet, their feces contained 900 more calories over the course of a week than when they were on the low fiber diet. 900x52 = 46,800 = would be 13 pounds fat difference in a year by making changes in what sort of food people ate (high versus low fiber).
Very interesting. I do wish the study was repeated with a larger sample of people, but I did not expect the difference to be that evident.0 -
billieljaime wrote: »so I should weigh my feces now? and subtract from my dailey calories???
mouahahaha! Yes, but make sure you separate dry waste matter from wet waste matter first.
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Exactly!!AbsoluteTara wrote:It is stating that just because you ingest 100 calories of some food, it doesn't mean that you digest all 100 calories. The availability of those calories for digestion and consumption by your body's cells vary from food to food.
So maybe the discussion should be:
should the food label (if there is one) show raw calories, or useful calories?
Do different people's bodies absorb different amounts from the same food? If so, there's no way to state how many useful calories are in any food; they'd have to use an average, and in that case why not revert to the data we already have, showing raw calories?
You didn't read the article, did you?hollydubs wrote:Even if this is true (which I'm not sure that it is), the difference between energy burned digesting raw and cooked foods is so minuscule that the calories are negligible
"the rats eating the puffed pellets grew heavier and had 30% more body fat than their counterparts eating regular chow"
30% more body fat is not "negligible". I'd venture to say that it's probably even statistically significant.0 -
So cooking isn't processing?sllrunner wrote:I personally don't eat a lot of processed food because I love cooking my own meals
According to that research article about comparing mice which ate a raw or cooked diet, they got heavier on the cooked food.
12 grams of fiber per day is not "high". It's not even average / recommended. It's about half of what's recommended. (Which, unfortunately, is probably what most Americans get.)Men were fed a diet that was high in fiber, then low in fiber (12g/day vrs 1g/day).0 -
You didn't read the article, did you?
"the rats eating the puffed pellets grew heavier and had 30% more body fat than their counterparts eating regular chow"
30% more body fat is not "negligible". I'd venture to say that it's probably even statistically significant.
That was for rats, though. I could swear I've seen research posted around these parts showing that correlating food related rat studies to humans is not exactly a straight-forward thing.
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https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-natureAgentOrangeJuice wrote:the quality of the calorie/unit of energy matters. Let's say, solar power vs coal. You'd go with solar power right? Why? It's all energy!
"appeal to nature
You argued that because something is 'natural' it is therefore valid, justified, inevitable, good or ideal."
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
"strawman
You misrepresented someone's argument to make it easier to attack."
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
"genetic
You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from"
And aside from all that...
A calorie your body takes in is equal to every other calorie your body takes in, no matter if the source is a raw organic sweet potato or a BigMac.
Yes, they're going to have different nutrients, and different absorption (raw calories vs. absorbed calories).
But once the calorie (piece of energy) is in the body, past the wall of the intestine*, it has just as much energy as any other calorie the body has absorbed.
*Because while food is in your digestive tract, it's really outside the body.Burt_Huttz wrote:Because the problem with obesity is that we think raw spinach is just too high-cal to justify? Stupidest assertion ever.dfargher wrote:Are you familiar with the term "straw man"? The article didn't say that raw spinach had too many calories to justify.
Yes, it was a strawman. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawmanBurt_Huttz wrote:My example was not a straw-man argument, it was an example of the problem that the author's system proposes to solve. Yes, it is ridiculous, but it isn't a straw-man.
"You misrepresented someone's argument to make it easier to attack.
By exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable, but this kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate."
The OP article says nothing about "raw spinach being too high-cal to justify".
In fact, other than an unlabelled picture of spinach I don't see any mention of it in the article.
And it specifically says that eating raw food is lower-calorie (at least, lower-absorbed-calorie) than eating the same food cooked.
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Exactly!!AbsoluteTara wrote:It is stating that just because you ingest 100 calories of some food, it doesn't mean that you digest all 100 calories. The availability of those calories for digestion and consumption by your body's cells vary from food to food.
So maybe the discussion should be:
should the food label (if there is one) show raw calories, or useful calories?
Do different people's bodies absorb different amounts from the same food? If so, there's no way to state how many useful calories are in any food; they'd have to use an average, and in that case why not revert to the data we already have, showing raw calories?
You didn't read the article, did you?hollydubs wrote:Even if this is true (which I'm not sure that it is), the difference between energy burned digesting raw and cooked foods is so minuscule that the calories are negligible
"the rats eating the puffed pellets grew heavier and had 30% more body fat than their counterparts eating regular chow"
30% more body fat is not "negligible". I'd venture to say that it's probably even statistically significant.
I second this.
Tbh, from a practical point of view (for the average consumer) I do think it would only cause more confusion. On the other hand, it may help people rethink their eating patterns.
Purely for the purpose of weight loss? I doubt it. At worst, you would be eating less calories than you think you are.
It could however, be useful for people on Very Low Calorie Diets, if that is ever recommended, as I assume they'd have to be more careful about their intake.0 -
snowflake930 wrote: »Are all inches equal?
How about yard sticks?
does 1 centimeter = 1 centimeter?
100 calories from an apple are equal to 100 calories from a twinkie.
the NUTRITION is not identical.
But the calories are the same because a calorie is simply a unit of measurement, the measurement of the amount of heat you need to raise the temp of a kg of water by one celsius degree
^^^She is right. Nutrition is the big difference.
As a kid, my Dad once tested my wit when he asked, "Which is heavier - a pound of potatoes or a pound of feathers?" And that's how I feel about this discussion.0 -
KharismaticKayteh wrote: »snowflake930 wrote: »Are all inches equal?
How about yard sticks?
does 1 centimeter = 1 centimeter?
100 calories from an apple are equal to 100 calories from a twinkie.
the NUTRITION is not identical.
But the calories are the same because a calorie is simply a unit of measurement, the measurement of the amount of heat you need to raise the temp of a kg of water by one celsius degree
^^^She is right. Nutrition is the big difference.
As a kid, my Dad once tested my wit when he asked, "Which is heavier - a pound of potatoes or a pound of feathers?" And that's how I feel about this discussion.
but you know, a pound of potatoes takes up a different amount of physical matter than a pound of feathers does right? Fat which is less dense, takes up more space than muscle, which is more dense does. crazy flawed logic are crazy.0
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