Scientific American: Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong

I hate articles like this. Sensible people read it as "I guess that means I should diligently track things and adjust for my specific circumstances". Others conclude "I'm a special snowflake who does everything right but unicorn hormones are causing me to gain weight".

^^^ this

and the amount of inaccuracy with calculating your activity factor (or exercise calories if you prefer that method) is far greater than any issues with whether your body's absorbing more or less of the calories from the food you eat than average. If you're doing it right then you' adjust your calorie goal based on real world results anyway. Doing that will compensate for any inaccuracies due to how efficiently (or otherwise) your body absorbs the food you eat, along with the inevitable miscalculation in your activity factor, and any individual differences that result in your BMR estimate being off.

I subscribe to the above magazine and found the article pretty interesting. There is a teaser for it here:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong

I was wondering if anyone else had seen the article or had thoughts on it. For the most part food labels work well enough for me, as long as I don't eat all of my fitbit calories, but I know people who swear they have followed everything, religiously, and still can't loose weight. Aside from any health related issues I wonder if this explains why what works for many doesn't work for all. Maybe they just digest food better than the rest and get more calories than the package claims. The article does give an example of a study down with Russian people verse Polish (if I remember right... I'm at work and the magazine is at home) people. Russians had a much longer intestine than the citizens of the other country and would gain more calories from their food. Cooking less and eating raw (when it's safe) can also lower your calorie consumption because your body has to work harder to break down the food. Same with whole grains verse processed grains.

I'd be willing to wager it has more to do with people not weighing portions and instead using some inaccurate means of portioning food vs inaccurate cal counts

I'd be willing to wager it has more to do with people not weighing portions and instead using some inaccurate means of portioning food vs inaccurate cal counts

I hate articles like this. Sensible people read it as "I guess that means I should diligently track things and adjust for my specific circumstances". Others conclude "I'm a special snowflake who does everything right but unicorn hormones are causing me to gain weight".

Finally... someone who understands my unicorn hormone problem!!! I find that eating magic beans really helps.

People differ immensely as well in what scientists have come to regard as an extra organ of the human body—the community of bacteria living in the intestines. In humans, two phyla of bacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, dominate the gut. Researchers have found that obese people have more Firmicutes in their intestines and have proposed that some people are obese, in part, because the extra bacteria make them more efficient at metabolizing food: so instead of being lost as waste, more nutrients make their way into the circulation and, if they go unused, get stored as fat. Other microbes turn up only in specific peoples. Some Japanese individuals, for example, have a microbe in their intestines that is particularly good at breaking down seaweed. It turns out this intestinal bacterium stole the seaweed-digesting genes from a marine bacterium that lingered on raw seaweed salads.

Even if we entirely revamped calorie counts, however, they would never be precisely accurate because the amount of calories we extract from food depends on such a complex interaction between food and the human body and its many microbes. In the end, we all want to know how to make the smartest choices at the supermarket. Merely counting calories based on food labels is an overly simplistic approach to eating a healthy diet—one that does not necessarily improve our health, even if it helps us lose weight. Instead we should think more carefully about the energy we get from our food in the context of human biology. Processed foods are so easily digested in the stomach and intestines that they give us a lot of energy for very little work. In contrast, veggies, nuts and whole grains make us sweat for our calories, generally offer far more vitamins and nutrients than processed items, and keep our gut bacteria happy. So it would be logical for people who want to eat healthier and cut calories to favor whole and raw foods over highly processed foods. You might call it the way of the emu.

I hate articles like this. Sensible people read it as "I guess that means I should diligently track things and adjust for my specific circumstances". Others conclude "I'm a special snowflake who does everything right but unicorn hormones are causing me to gain weight".

OK, first I will vent, if you don't want to read it skip this next paragraph (this vent also comes from years of reading misunderstandings regarding psychology studies):

Just because something is simple and works great for group A doesn't meant that it will blanket effect and work great for everyone. There are people, for real, who do follow "all of the rules" and it doesn't work for them. I am in a career field (military) where weight matters so I've seen it happen plenty of times. People hire dietians, work out, count calories, everything and still hold onto weight. For people who honestly have something it can be relavant. Especially if they've seen a Dr. and drugs, thyroid, and all of the other usual factors are ruled out. Science is never irrelevant. Just because you don't care it doesn't meant it shouldn't be sought out. This is the food and nutrition forum and the article is about food and nutrition. Some of us like to know all of the details. I missed the previous posting of this though, otherwise I would have just commited on it. This world isn't black and white, don't make it that way. I mostly thought it was relavant because there always seem to be people who answer the, "why won't I lose weight," posts with, "haha, you are obviously not doing something right." How do YOU know they are not doing something right? Maybe there really is another factor. The majority do well with calories in/out based on labels and HRM (or whatever you use for calorie counting) but not 100% of the population. To read this and say, "woo, I don't need to count calories it's a waste," would also be taking a black and white approach to this. Knowledge is power if you use it right.

Less Ranty reply:

I think it's good that it is studied, knowledge is power (yea I'm keeping that line). If calories in/out works for you then by all means use it! I still am. I also like knowing that my calories might be too low if I don't digest something well (which is obvious if it shows up in my poop) or high if it's something that is quickly digested.. ie sugar. I can plan better diets that might work better knowing more about how the body treats calories. It also might explain why half of my family can eat like horses and not gain a lb while the other half can smell food and gain weight. Maybe one digests things better (my body follows the weight gainers side). Maybe, if I do digest stuff better I can eat lower calories, lose weight, and not become malnurished because I'm obviously abosorbing calories well enough otherwise I wouldn't gain weight. Of course healthier food choices will help in terms of malnurishment vs. not, but you don't have to fear lower calories since there is a little bit of, "OMG, starvation mode!" stiff going around.

"Digestion is far too messy a process to accurately convey in neat numbers. The counts on food labels can differ wildly from the calories you actually extract, for many reasons"