Is a calorie just a calorie?

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.

mrmagee3

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.

I agree with that -- I think one of the issues is that we don't currently know whether the concerns are actually marginal. I made the above ratios 80% and 90% because they resulted in nice, round numbers that illustrated the point clearly, though I'm guessing the actual differences would be much smaller than that.

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.

I think there are a lot of problems, from a purely technical perspective, on how we measure almost everything related to weight management. Given that we (presumably) eat a wide variety of food with differing TEF and bioavailability, the TDEE is really always going to be a best-guess average of a 'normal' day of eating. Which, given the standards of food labeling and weighing and whatnot, works, because your intake is always going to be a best-guess average as well. You're dealing with a lot of imprecision when you're counting all of this stuff. So from a real-world perspective, it might not matter -- if the differences are negligible, or if to actually have precision, you're spending all of your day measuring food to the 1/1000th of a gram, it might not be worth worrying about to the average person.

From a science perspective, though, novel ideas are worth studying if only that they give us a better understanding of our bodies and the way we process foods. The knowledge is valuable for the future -- because good science goes where data brings us, you don't really know what we can learn by going down certain paths. If one of those paths ends up giving us another alternative dietary strategy that is scientifically sound, that's a good thing, in my opinion.

HacheraTsarine

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

^^This
A calorie is nothing but an unit of energy, just like joules or BTU's. So when people say "a calorie is just a calorie", they're right.

BUT

We can't take calories out of context. We don't live in a universe where we gobble down little spheres of energy. Those calories come from food and that food have a varying degree of nutritional value, and this has to be acknowledge too.

neanderthin

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.

I agree with that -- I think one of the issues is that we don't currently know whether the concerns are actually marginal. I made the above ratios 80% and 90% because they resulted in nice, round numbers that illustrated the point clearly, though I'm guessing the actual differences would be much smaller than that.

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.

I think there are a lot of problems, from a purely technical perspective, on how we measure almost everything related to weight management. Given that we (presumably) eat a wide variety of food with differing TEF and bioavailability, the TDEE is really always going to be a best-guess average of a 'normal' day of eating. Which, given the standards of food labeling and weighing and whatnot, works, because your intake is always going to be a best-guess average as well. You're dealing with a lot of imprecision when you're counting all of this stuff. So from a real-world perspective, it might not matter -- if the differences are negligible, or if to actually have precision, you're spending all of your day measuring food to the 1/1000th of a gram, it might not be worth worrying about to the average person.

From a science perspective, though, novel ideas are worth studying if only that they give us a better understanding of our bodies and the way we process foods. The knowledge is valuable for the future -- because good science goes where data brings us, you don't really know what we can learn by going down certain paths. If one of those paths ends up giving us another alternative dietary strategy that is scientifically sound, that's a good thing, in my opinion.

Agree totally.

ItsCasey

Okay, I actually did read the article, and this is another example of someone with a writing background trying to teach people about a subject she seems to know little about. She interviewed some people and is clearly ill-equipped to challenge anything they told her because nutrition is not her area of expertise.

Her article starts with the premise that weight-loss may not really be just a matter of energy balance, and instead of explaining why, she launches into a discussion of how cooked food takes less energy to digest than raw food. What does that have to do with anything? Is the difference really so large that eating a diet of mostly cooked food is going to prevent me from losing weight because I'm relying on nutrition labels that are not 100% accurate? No. It isn't.

Losing, gaining, or maintaining weight is entirely about energy balance. A calorie IS just a calorie. If you want to get into a more nuanced discussion of how different kinds of foods affect different people or the margin of error on nutrition labels or the nutritional difference between a raw chicken breast and a cooked one, then put a different label on it, because those discussions have little, if anything, to do with whether or not you can lose as much weight eating 2000 calories of processed food vs. 2000 calories of raw, whole food.

mrmagee3

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.

A secondary point that the article makes would be about concepts like denaturing proteins - that speaks not necessarily to the calorie impact of the food, but to the usability of the nutrient itself. If a piece of food X has 5g of protein, but when cooked, the proteins are denatured and unusable, one should not count 5g for protein intake, because that food may not be supplying the essential components of protein which are needed for life (which is why we count protein in the first place).

That speaks directly to the nutritional quality of a given calorie and is a pretty interesting point.

chezjuan

But this obviously is hard to digest...

LOL

Juliejustsaying

IN for snarkiness
TL/DR


However, this is subjective...like medicine is subjective. The calorie is subjective according to what the body does with it. And there are a million different variables that could effect that usage...

NO, I do not believe that one calorie going into the body is just like another calorie. I know my body uses them differently, some go straight to my *kitten*, and some like to fuel my workouts. Oversimplification, yes...but so is saying a calorie is a calorie.

And I'm one of those freaky americans who use cups...



and this IS me being serious...for realz....take some nutrition and anatomy & physiology classes...eventually you stop trying to over simplify the science.

neanderthin

Okay, I actually did read the article, and this is another example of someone with a writing background trying to teach people about a subject she seems to know little about. She interviewed some people and is clearly ill-equipped to challenge anything they told her because nutrition is not her area of expertise.

Her article starts with the premise that weight-loss may not really be just a matter of energy balance, and instead of explaining why, she launches into a discussion of how cooked food takes less energy to digest than raw food. What does that have to do with anything? Is the difference really so large that eating a diet of mostly cooked food is going to prevent me from losing weight because I'm relying on nutrition labels that are not 100% accurate? No. It isn't.

Losing, gaining, or maintaining weight is entirely about energy balance. A calorie IS just a calorie. If you want to get into a more nuanced discussion of how different kinds of foods affect different people or the margin of error on nutrition labels or the nutritional difference between a raw chicken breast and a cooked one, then put a different label on it, because those discussions have little, if anything, to do with whether or not you can lose as much weight eating 2000 calories of processed food vs. 2000 calories of raw, whole food.

I like.

mrmagee3

Losing, gaining, or maintaining weight is entirely about energy balance. A calorie IS just a calorie. If you want to get into a more nuanced discussion of how different kinds of foods affect different people or the margin of error on nutrition labels or the nutritional difference between a raw chicken breast and a cooked one, then put a different label on it, because those discussions have little, if anything, to do with whether or not you can lose as much weight eating 2000 calories of processed food vs. 2000 calories of raw, whole food.

I think you're missing the point of the article (and the resulting discussion). I'm not putting it in terms of processed food versus whole foods, just one food versus another food.

See my points above -- the article's hypothesis (and I agree -- it's not very well written or well sourced, but it's not a medical journal, so I take what I can) is that the measurement of a calorie at the mouth provides an incorrect measurement of the amount of net calories the food puts into our system.

It's saying that 2000 calories at the mouth of food X might correspond to 1800 usable calories to our bodies (as there is a digestive cost in calories for everything we take in), whereas 2000 calories at the mouth of food Y might correspond to 1700 usable calories (as the digestive cost is different).

They're not arguing energy balance at all. If anything, they're arguing for a paradigm shift in how we measure calorie intake and TDEE - the hypothesis is "[o]ur current system for assessing calories is surely wrong".

UsedToBeHusky

Quality of the calories is NOT just as important as the quantity of calories when it comes to weight loss.

It might be important to general overall health and body composition, but that doesn't mean that one should completely deny themselves indulgent food either, as it may not be good for mental health.

Honestly, good health and nutrition is about finding balance.