Interesting Nutritional Confusion

jim180155

I'm listening to the audio book Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham in which he explains the theory that we evolved into humans by cooking our food. (Stress is on the word "theory." There is evidence that the theory is valid, but there is little actual proof at this time.) Cooking food helped shape our bodies, social structures, gender relations, and freed man (and women) to spend their time doing more than chewing food and sleeping, as most primates do. That isn't the interesting part. That's the whole book right up until the end, but it drags on much longer than necessary.

The epilogue is the interesting part. On MFP some of us tend to obsess over counting calories, weighing/measuring what we eat, and factoring in calories burned to stay within supposedly strict limits and goals. But no matter how diligent we are in tracking calories in vs calories out, we'll never be all that precise because our data is flawed.

Two peaches or two oranges from the same tree can differ greatly in their nutritional and caloric content. The nutritional info we use is nothing more than an average determined by nutritionists.

Protein and carbs both have 4 calories per gram while fat has 9 calories per gram. But not all proteins are the same. Some have more than 4 calories, some have less. It's not a huge variance, maybe 1 calorie, but that could still result in a 25% variance. The same is true of carbs and fats.

Digestion raises our metabolic rate 25% on average, and varies based on the state of the food. Ground or blended food is easier to digest than whole, unaltered food, and cooked food is easier to digest than raw food. The easier it is to digest a food, the fewer calories we'll burn digesting it.

Obese people digest food easier than slim people; slim people's metabolisms will increase more as they digest the same food. No one knows yet whether obesity causes the easy digestion, or if easy digestion and resulting lower metabolic rates cause obesity.


I don't plan to do anything differently. I'll still track my calories based on labels and databases. I just thought it was interesting to find out that even if we track things to the last gram, we've got nothing more than estimates. We might be eating more or less than we think, and we might be better or worse at processing those calories.

neanderthin

It's basically all estimating but it's the recording and adjustment to progress over time that's important.

Cortelli

Don't know anything about the book but a nice post reminding us that it is all just an estimate -- all of it. Key is to track, evaluate data, adjust . . . track, evaluate data, adjust . . . etc.

ETA: Cross-posted with Neanderthin - we're saying the same thing. Jinx.

3laine75

I think it all probably averages out.

jim180155

I agree with you guys. But....

You know those days when you think you've done everything right but you wake up the next day 2 pounds heavier? I've got my excuses ready now.