Is a calorie just a calorie?

milesvictors

Interesting article challenging the "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" argument:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/calorie-counting/

I personally agree with this article, that the quality of calories is just as important as the quantity. Discussion?

Ready.....GO!

AglaeaC

There isn't enough science in the article to take a stand in my opinion, but anything that even smells of paradigm shift is interesting. Thanks for posting the link! The reader comments are worth taking a glance at, as well.

JakeBrownVB

a calorie IS just a calorie, its not even a debate.

how you are effected by the quality of the FOOD is simply down to the person. Some people can get jacked on poptarts because it doesnt affect their energy in the gym and they can still give their full pump, some will be so un energized and feel like chit and wont cope at all.

the ONLY difference beyond your personal responses to certain foods in your system is how the body processes some food, some are processed easier than others and some consume more energy to digest than others. However the calorie difference between "hard" to process and "easy" to process foods is so insignificant that it is really bein padantic to then justify telling an overweight person that a calorie is not just a calorie

AglaeaC

a calorie IS just a calorie, its not even a debate.

how you are effected by the quality of the FOOD is simply down to the person. Some people can get jacked on poptarts because it doesnt affect their energy in the gym and they can still give their full pump, some will be so un energized and feel like chit and wont cope at all.

the ONLY difference beyond your personal responses to certain foods in your system is how the body processes some food, some are processed easier than others and some consume more energy to digest than others. However the calorie difference between "hard" to process and "easy" to process foods is so insignificant that it is really bein padantic to then justify telling an overweight person that a calorie is not just a calorie

Did you read the article? Because to me it sounds like you didn't.

hookilau

pedantic. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
that word always cracks me up.
don't judge me. :huh:

AglaeaC

pedantic. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
that word always cracks me up.
don't judge me. :huh:

Oh I'm so judging you right now.

JakeBrownVB

Did you read the article? Because to me it sounds like you didn't.

yes i did.. your point?

Ainar

Calorie is still a calorie...

Yes, some foods take more energy to digest. But that does not means that there is less calories or that calories are not the same... they just are used to digest food. Therefore, calorie is still a calorie.

Calorie is just a unit to measure energy in food. Just because some of it is used doesnt mean it's less of it in food or that it is any different.

scottaworley

a calorie IS just a calorie, its not even a debate.

how you are effected by the quality of the FOOD is simply down to the person. Some people can get jacked on poptarts because it doesnt affect their energy in the gym and they can still give their full pump, some will be so un energized and feel like chit and wont cope at all.

the ONLY difference beyond your personal responses to certain foods in your system is how the body processes some food, some are processed easier than others and some consume more energy to digest than others. However the calorie difference between "hard" to process and "easy" to process foods is so insignificant that it is really bein padantic to then justify telling an overweight person that a calorie is not just a calorie

NO ONE is getting jacked on JUST pop tarts.
Come on dude. Macros matter.

55in13

We have always known that the calories of energy that actually become available for your activities don't match the label exactly; lots of things affect how efficiently the energy gets converted and they just use a reasonable average to arrive at the number. It's one of those things I have always figured is likely to cancel out by random chance; some foods will give you more than the label says, some less. I think people get hung up on tweaking the details too much. there might be something to it, but it isn't what is keeping obese people from losing weight.

mrmagee3

Calorie is still a calorie...

Yes, some foods take more energy to digest. But that does not means that there is less calories or that calories are not the same... they just are used to digest food. Therefore, calorie is still a calorie.

Calorie is just a unit to measure energy in food. Just because some of it is used doesnt mean it's less of it in food or that it is any different.

This is one of those things that's technically true, but misses the point.

Yes, we all know a calorie is a unit of energy that's always equal to 4.18 joules regardless of anything else. However, in the context in which we are speaking -- nutrition, calorie counting, and weight loss -- asking if a "calorie is just a calorie" has an obviously different meaning. The question is, "does 2000 calories of food X have the same effect on me as 2000 calories of food Y?"

If one takes the article's hypothesis, they are saying that food X might have a lower overall net calorie count than food Y, based on digestion and other processes. So if food X takes 200 calories to digest, feed the bacteria in your intestine, etc., and food Y takes 100 calories to do the same, the net result would be 1800 bioavailable calories for food X, and 1900 bioavailable calories for food Y.

This seems to make reasonable sense, as a view of calorie intake at the point of the mouth is overly simplistic for a mechanism as complicated as our digestion and metabolism, in my opinion.

Chadomaniac

EDIT

Chadomaniac

Calorie is still a calorie...

Yes, some foods take more energy to digest. But that does not means that there is less calories or that calories are not the same... they just are used to digest food. Therefore, calorie is still a calorie.

Calorie is just a unit to measure energy in food. Just because some of it is used doesnt mean it's less of it in food or that it is any different.

This is one of those things that's technically true, but misses the point.

Yes, we all know a calorie is a unit of energy that's always equal to 4.18 joules regardless of anything else. However, in the context in which we are speaking -- nutrition, calorie counting, and weight loss -- asking if a "calorie is just a calorie" has an obviously different meaning. The question is, "does 2000 calories of food X have the same effect on me as 2000 calories of food Y?"

If one takes the article's hypothesis, they are saying that food X might have a lower overall net calorie count than food Y, based on digestion and other processes. So if food X takes 200 calories to digest, feed the bacteria in your intestine, etc., and food Y takes 100 calories to do the same, the net result would be 1800 bioavailable calories for food X, and 1900 bioavailable calories for food Y.

This seems to make reasonable sense, as a view of calorie intake at the point of the mouth is overly simplistic for a mechanism as complicated as our digestion and metabolism, in my opinion.

Thermogenesis again whats new?

Proteins will require more energy to digest . Now they going on to say that protein from beef vs protein from chicken breast may have a different digestion because the TYPE of protein?

or saturated fat from coconut oil vs saturated fat from butter will have a different effect ?

AglaeaC

Calorie is still a calorie...

Yes, some foods take more energy to digest. But that does not means that there is less calories or that calories are not the same... they just are used to digest food. Therefore, calorie is still a calorie.

Calorie is just a unit to measure energy in food. Just because some of it is used doesnt mean it's less of it in food or that it is any different.

This is one of those things that's technically true, but misses the point.

Yes, we all know a calorie is a unit of energy that's always equal to 4.18 joules regardless of anything else. However, in the context in which we are speaking -- nutrition, calorie counting, and weight loss -- asking if a "calorie is just a calorie" has an obviously different meaning. The question is, "does 2000 calories of food X have the same effect on me as 2000 calories of food Y?"

If one takes the article's hypothesis, they are saying that food X might have a lower overall net calorie count than food Y, based on digestion and other processes. So if food X takes 200 calories to digest, feed the bacteria in your intestine, etc., and food Y takes 100 calories to do the same, the net result would be 1800 bioavailable calories for food X, and 1900 bioavailable calories for food Y.

This seems to make reasonable sense, as a view of calorie intake at the point of the mouth is overly simplistic for a mechanism as complicated as our digestion and metabolism, in my opinion.

This. It's a bit like systems (isolated, closed, open) in thermodynamics; takes counting calories to another level. But this obviously is hard to digest if one is very anal about counting them.

AglaeaC

:huh: Read the article . They still saying that a calorie is a calorie but only difference is a human being is not the same as every other human being and we all digest calories at different rates etc... Yes obviously metabolism , genetics , age , gender , height etc... will have an influence on the final amount of calories you consume

Whats new?

Some of us haven't read very much on this topic yet. Good for you for being so informed.

neanderthin

The argument and confusion between a calorie is a calorie and not all calories are created equal, again.

SadFaerie

It's interesting, but I think they got it all wrong. I agree, unprocessed foods are (or may be) better than processed, cause (apparently) it takes more energy to break it down (I guess for processing our food in the ovens we use the energy our guts would use otherwise, but hey, I'm not up for eating raw meat, thank you very very much). And yes, there are other factors involved, gut bacterias and many more.

Still... a calorie is a calorie. Because of all the factors involved, counting calories in/out will always be a guesstimation. But the rule of thumb is: if you eat ie. 1500 calories (from whatever sources) and you gain, you're in surplus, if you lose, you're in deficit. Even if you eat superclean and superhealthy and your body uses more energy to process unprocessed foods, if you eat too many calories total, you'll gain weight. So I'm unsure what is it they're trying to prove in the article...

Chadomaniac

Agreed.

According to the article

Example:
500cal from a big mac vs 500cal from chicken and rice

The 500cal from chicken and rice may require more energy to digest hence putting you in a further deficit . ACCORDING to the article .

mrmagee3

It's interesting, but I think they got it all wrong. I agree, unprocessed foods are (or may be) better than processed, cause (apparently) it takes more energy to break it down (I guess for processing our food in the ovens we use the energy our guts would use otherwise, but hey, I'm not up for eating raw meat, thank you very very much). And yes, there are other factors involved, gut bacterias and many more.

Still... a calorie is a calorie. Because of all the factors involved, counting calories in/out will always be a guesstimation. But the rule of thumb is: if you eat ie. 1500 calories (from whatever sources) and you gain, you're in surplus, if you lose, you're in deficit. Even if you eat superclean and superhealthy and your body uses more energy to process unprocessed foods, if you eat too many calories total, you'll gain weight. So I'm unsure what is it they're trying to prove in the article...

I think the point of the article is actually to push back against that 1500 calories notion, depending on how you're measuring.

I'm going to take it as an assumption that you're referring to traditional calorie counting -- looking at the package for calories, or weighing, or whatnot -- measuring your calorie intake at the mouth, which is how we normally do it.

For sake of discussion, let's define a "bioavailability percentage" as "the amount of calories of energy you intake, minus the amount of calories used for the biological processes necessary to digest it" -- i.e., a net calorie count.

If food X is 80% bioavailable, and food Y is 90% bioavailable -- if you're eating 1500 calories a day of food Y (as measured at the mouth) and not losing weight, the article leads to the hypothesis that you could switch to eating 1500 calories a day of food X (with lower bioavailability) and lose weight, simply due to the different food. That's a pretty big change from the way most people (at least, here) view calories and caloric intake.

ironanimal

A calorie is a unit of measure, so yeah, a calorie is a calorie, a gram is a gram and a cup is something weird Americans use.

ndj1979

a calorie is just a calorie...quality does not matter, quantity does...

Is the article saying that you can eat a caloric surplus of "quality" calories and you won't gain?

You can eat + 3500 a week of "quality" calories, and you will gain one pound a week....

If you don't believe me try it and see what happens..

so a calorie is a calorie...which is a measure of energy ..eat too many, you gain; eat too few, you lose..

ndj1979

It's interesting, but I think they got it all wrong. I agree, unprocessed foods are (or may be) better than processed, cause (apparently) it takes more energy to break it down (I guess for processing our food in the ovens we use the energy our guts would use otherwise, but hey, I'm not up for eating raw meat, thank you very very much). And yes, there are other factors involved, gut bacterias and many more.

Still... a calorie is a calorie. Because of all the factors involved, counting calories in/out will always be a guesstimation. But the rule of thumb is: if you eat ie. 1500 calories (from whatever sources) and you gain, you're in surplus, if you lose, you're in deficit. Even if you eat superclean and superhealthy and your body uses more energy to process unprocessed foods, if you eat too many calories total, you'll gain weight. So I'm unsure what is it they're trying to prove in the article...

I think the point of the article is actually to push back against that 1500 calories notion, depending on how you're measuring.

I'm going to take it as an assumption that you're referring to traditional calorie counting -- looking at the package for calories, or weighing, or whatnot -- measuring your calorie intake at the mouth, which is how we normally do it.

For sake of discussion, let's define a "bioavailability percentage" as "the amount of calories of energy you intake, minus the amount of calories used for the biological processes necessary to digest it" -- i.e., a net calorie count.

If food X is 80% bioavailable, and food Y is 90% bioavailable -- if you're eating 1500 calories a day of food Y (as measured at the mouth) and not losing weight, the article leads to the hypothesis that you could switch to eating 1500 calories a day of food X (with lower bioavailability) and lose weight, simply due to the different food. That's a pretty big change from the way most people (at least, here) view calories and caloric intake.

go ahead and test it yourself....find some "food y" and eat in a 3500 a week surplus and see if you gain ...

mrmagee3

It's interesting, but I think they got it all wrong. I agree, unprocessed foods are (or may be) better than processed, cause (apparently) it takes more energy to break it down (I guess for processing our food in the ovens we use the energy our guts would use otherwise, but hey, I'm not up for eating raw meat, thank you very very much). And yes, there are other factors involved, gut bacterias and many more.

Still... a calorie is a calorie. Because of all the factors involved, counting calories in/out will always be a guesstimation. But the rule of thumb is: if you eat ie. 1500 calories (from whatever sources) and you gain, you're in surplus, if you lose, you're in deficit. Even if you eat superclean and superhealthy and your body uses more energy to process unprocessed foods, if you eat too many calories total, you'll gain weight. So I'm unsure what is it they're trying to prove in the article...

I think the point of the article is actually to push back against that 1500 calories notion, depending on how you're measuring.

I'm going to take it as an assumption that you're referring to traditional calorie counting -- looking at the package for calories, or weighing, or whatnot -- measuring your calorie intake at the mouth, which is how we normally do it.

For sake of discussion, let's define a "bioavailability percentage" as "the amount of calories of energy you intake, minus the amount of calories used for the biological processes necessary to digest it" -- i.e., a net calorie count.

If food X is 80% bioavailable, and food Y is 90% bioavailable -- if you're eating 1500 calories a day of food Y (as measured at the mouth) and not losing weight, the article leads to the hypothesis that you could switch to eating 1500 calories a day of food X (with lower bioavailability) and lose weight, simply due to the different food. That's a pretty big change from the way most people (at least, here) view calories and caloric intake.

go ahead and test it yourself....find some "food y" and eat in a 3500 a week surplus and see if you gain ...

I'm going to respond to you as if you actually had read and understood my post, and not as if you were looking to inject a little snark into a serious conversation, OK?

If my maintenance calorie level is 2000/day (nice, round numbers), and I measured calories the way we normally do, at the mouth -- and I took in 2000 calories a day of food X at 80% bioavailability, per MFP, I would be eating at my maintenance level. Per the article, I'd actually be at a deficit -- about 400kcal/day, actually. This means one of two things -- either the maintenance level is incorrect, because all foods have some sort of digestive energy necessary which makes them not 100% bioavailable and the maintenance level doesn't take that into account, or I'm actually losing weight while eating my "maintenance calories" (measured at the mouth).

If, as per your supposition, I switched to all of food Y, we'd have the same issue, only I'd be at 200kcal/day deficit, meaning I'd expect to lose weight less rapidly.

If, in your example, I ate a 3500 calorie a week surplus of food X (that is, measured at the mouth, I was intaking 2500kcal/day at a 2000kcal/day maintenance level), per the bioavailability percentages given, I'd be eating 2000 kcal/day of net usable calories of food X, and 2250 kcal of net usable calories of food Y. So, I would expect to gain weight on food Y more quickly than food X -- which is exactly the point the article was making. So...thanks.

mrmagee3

a calorie is just a calorie...quality does not matter, quantity does...

Is the article saying that you can eat a caloric surplus of "quality" calories and you won't gain?

You can eat + 3500 a week of "quality" calories, and you will gain one pound a week....

If you don't believe me try it and see what happens..

so a calorie is a calorie...which is a measure of energy ..eat too many, you gain; eat too few, you lose..

A woman, Sally, is eating 1000kcal a day, walking briskly three times a week for a couple miles, and isn't losing any weight. What do you tell her to do?

ndj1979

It's interesting, but I think they got it all wrong. I agree, unprocessed foods are (or may be) better than processed, cause (apparently) it takes more energy to break it down (I guess for processing our food in the ovens we use the energy our guts would use otherwise, but hey, I'm not up for eating raw meat, thank you very very much). And yes, there are other factors involved, gut bacterias and many more.

Still... a calorie is a calorie. Because of all the factors involved, counting calories in/out will always be a guesstimation. But the rule of thumb is: if you eat ie. 1500 calories (from whatever sources) and you gain, you're in surplus, if you lose, you're in deficit. Even if you eat superclean and superhealthy and your body uses more energy to process unprocessed foods, if you eat too many calories total, you'll gain weight. So I'm unsure what is it they're trying to prove in the article...

I think the point of the article is actually to push back against that 1500 calories notion, depending on how you're measuring.

I'm going to take it as an assumption that you're referring to traditional calorie counting -- looking at the package for calories, or weighing, or whatnot -- measuring your calorie intake at the mouth, which is how we normally do it.

For sake of discussion, let's define a "bioavailability percentage" as "the amount of calories of energy you intake, minus the amount of calories used for the biological processes necessary to digest it" -- i.e., a net calorie count.

If food X is 80% bioavailable, and food Y is 90% bioavailable -- if you're eating 1500 calories a day of food Y (as measured at the mouth) and not losing weight, the article leads to the hypothesis that you could switch to eating 1500 calories a day of food X (with lower bioavailability) and lose weight, simply due to the different food. That's a pretty big change from the way most people (at least, here) view calories and caloric intake.

go ahead and test it yourself....find some "food y" and eat in a 3500 a week surplus and see if you gain ...

I'm going to respond to you as if you actually had read and understood my post, and not as if you were looking to inject a little snark into a serious conversation, OK?

If my maintenance calorie level is 2000/day (nice, round numbers), and I measured calories the way we normally do, at the mouth -- and I took in 2000 calories a day of food X at 80% bioavailability, per MFP, I would be eating at my maintenance level. Per the article, I'd actually be at a deficit -- about 400kcal/day, actually. This means one of two things -- either the maintenance level is incorrect, because all foods have some sort of digestive energy necessary which makes them not 100% bioavailable and the maintenance level doesn't take that into account, or I'm actually losing weight while eating my "maintenance calories" (measured at the mouth).

If, as per your supposition, I switched to all of food Y, we'd have the same issue, only I'd be at 200kcal/day deficit, meaning I'd expect to lose weight less rapidly.

If, in your example, I ate a 3500 calorie a week surplus of food X (that is, measured at the mouth, I was intaking 2500kcal/day at a 2000kcal/day maintenance level), per the bioavailability percentages given, I'd be eating 2000 kcal/day of net usable calories of food X, and 2250 kcal of net usable calories of food Y. So, I would expect to gain weight on food Y more quickly than food X -- which is exactly the point the article was making. So...thanks.

there was no snark, i am being serious....if you are confident in your theory, go ahead and test it out on yourself, see what happens, and report back.

giveMEbeauty

Bump

ndj1979

a calorie is just a calorie...quality does not matter, quantity does...

Is the article saying that you can eat a caloric surplus of "quality" calories and you won't gain?

You can eat + 3500 a week of "quality" calories, and you will gain one pound a week....

If you don't believe me try it and see what happens..

so a calorie is a calorie...which is a measure of energy ..eat too many, you gain; eat too few, you lose..

A woman, Sally, is eating 1000kcal a day, walking briskly three times a week for a couple miles, and isn't losing any weight. What do you tell her to do?

there is not enough information about "Sally" to give advice....has she been eating at 1000 calories for over six months? If yes, could be metabolic slowdown and she may need to eat more. How many calories is she burning on these walks? Does she weigh, measure, log everything? how tall is she, weight? etc...

mrmagee3

a calorie is just a calorie...quality does not matter, quantity does...

Is the article saying that you can eat a caloric surplus of "quality" calories and you won't gain?

You can eat + 3500 a week of "quality" calories, and you will gain one pound a week....

If you don't believe me try it and see what happens..

so a calorie is a calorie...which is a measure of energy ..eat too many, you gain; eat too few, you lose..

A woman, Sally, is eating 1000kcal a day, walking briskly three times a week for a couple miles, and isn't losing any weight. What do you tell her to do?

there is not enough information about "Sally" to give advice....has she been eating at 1000 calories for over six months? If yes, could be metabolic slowdown and she may need to eat more. How many calories is she burning on these walks? Does she weigh, measure, log everything? how tall is she, weight? etc...

Presumably, she's in a lab, and everything is tightly controlled, measured, etc. She's in a bubble in this hypothetical situation. Though the point I was trying to make is contained within your response:

If yes, could be metabolic slowdown and she may need to eat more...

The point you had been making previously in this thread (and others) is that calories are all that matter. It's a reasonable position to take, definitely in line with common (if overly simplistic) nutritional thought today. However, when presented with a person who was eating at a given calorie range and not losing weight, you prescribed "eat more" as a therapy.

If calories were actually the absolute bottom line, your prescription would be doomed to fail - more calories would mean she would start gaining weight, contrary to Sally's stated goal of losing. The admission that eating more can be a therapy that leads to increased weight loss presupposes that there are outside issues other than calories that play a role in weight management -- metabolism, in this case. The article was simply making the case that digestion and other factors also play a role, which is not a very radical position to take.

mrmagee3

there was no snark, i am being serious....if you are confident in your theory, go ahead and test it out on yourself, see what happens, and report back.

It's the articles theory, I'm just trying to explain it in a clear manner -- though I do agree with it in principle. Any test I would do on myself (and, trust me, I'm not averse to doing so) is nondeterministic -- at the very least, it's an N=1 study, which is pretty unconvincing scientifically.

neanderthin

a calorie is just a calorie...quality does not matter, quantity does...

Is the article saying that you can eat a caloric surplus of "quality" calories and you won't gain?

You can eat + 3500 a week of "quality" calories, and you will gain one pound a week....

If you don't believe me try it and see what happens..

so a calorie is a calorie...which is a measure of energy ..eat too many, you gain; eat too few, you lose..

A woman, Sally, is eating 1000kcal a day, walking briskly three times a week for a couple miles, and isn't losing any weight. What do you tell her to do?

there is not enough information about "Sally" to give advice....has she been eating at 1000 calories for over six months? If yes, could be metabolic slowdown and she may need to eat more. How many calories is she burning on these walks? Does she weigh, measure, log everything? how tall is she, weight? etc...

Presumably, she's in a lab, and everything is tightly controlled, measured, etc. She's in a bubble in this hypothetical situation. Though the point I was trying to make is contained within your response:

If yes, could be metabolic slowdown and she may need to eat more...

The point you had been making previously in this thread (and others) is that calories are all that matter. It's a reasonable position to take, definitely in line with common (if overly simplistic) nutritional thought today. However, when presented with a person who was eating at a given calorie range and not losing weight, you prescribed "eat more" as a therapy.

If calories were actually the absolute bottom line, your prescription would be doomed to fail - more calories would mean she would start gaining weight, contrary to Sally's stated goal of losing. The admission that eating more can be a therapy that leads to increased weight loss presupposes that there are outside issues other than calories that play a role in weight management -- metabolism, in this case. The article was simply making the case that digestion and other factors also play a role, which is not a very radical position to take.

It seems the confusion is that these other factors like TEF and bioavailability that ultimitely effect weight loss are not common factors in trying to calculate TDEE from most websites and this gets confused in as much that we haven't factored those into the equation.

In fact the body has always taken these factors into account as far as weight loss is concerned and when we actually find our TDEE the old fashion way by consuming food, recording that intake, we then know how many calories our TDEE actually is as opposed to a guess over the internet and with those built in shortcomings on an individual basis this study throws a few more scientific terms that confuse people more, unfortunately it doesn't confuse our body or thermodynamics, which is what counts.....people will always be confused.

Ainar

Calorie is still a calorie...

Yes, some foods take more energy to digest. But that does not means that there is less calories or that calories are not the same... they just are used to digest food. Therefore, calorie is still a calorie.

Calorie is just a unit to measure energy in food. Just because some of it is used doesnt mean it's less of it in food or that it is any different.

This is one of those things that's technically true, but misses the point.

Yes, we all know a calorie is a unit of energy that's always equal to 4.18 joules regardless of anything else. However, in the context in which we are speaking -- nutrition, calorie counting, and weight loss -- asking if a "calorie is just a calorie" has an obviously different meaning. The question is, "does 2000 calories of food X have the same effect on me as 2000 calories of food Y?"

If one takes the article's hypothesis, they are saying that food X might have a lower overall net calorie count than food Y, based on digestion and other processes. So if food X takes 200 calories to digest, feed the bacteria in your intestine, etc., and food Y takes 100 calories to do the same, the net result would be 1800 bioavailable calories for food X, and 1900 bioavailable calories for food Y.

This seems to make reasonable sense, as a view of calorie intake at the point of the mouth is overly simplistic for a mechanism as complicated as our digestion and metabolism, in my opinion.

The title of thread is "Is a calorie just a calorie?" and that's what OP is implying, that it isn't, by offering this irrelevant article what talks about something completelly else. That's what I was replying to...

Obviously food digests differently. And that's nothing new, there have been countless studies and research, that's proven. It should be a know fact by now. But people should not take atricles what writes about it implying that it has something to do with calorie itself and actual "quality of calorie"... there's no such thing.