Scientific American: Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong

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  • pcastagner
    pcastagner Posts: 1,606 Member
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    But there also is increasing evidence that calorie counts for various foods are "off" because calorimeters are used to figure the calories. Calorimeter burn off all the calories in the food. Humans don't. That's why they found that almonds, for example, have about 20% fewer calories when digested by humans than they do when burned off by calorimeters.

    What does a calorimeter say when you run it on nutshells? Or coal?

    It tells you potentially how many calories of energy an organism capable of eating them can release by doing so. Just like it does with people food.

    And just as with people food, it's only part of the whole picture. The thing is, AS LONG AS YOU ADJUST BASED ON RESULTS, it's accurate enough for successfully changing your body composition. Which explains all the body recompositions around here...

    Why are these kinds of articles with old news so popular? Maybe because the idea of losing weight without trying or dieting is really, really attractive? I've got so many friends who would argue until blue in the face that you don't have to feel hungry if you eat this or that, and you can lose weight without dieting. They are all still fat, and I'm polishing up my six pack.
  • sympha01
    sympha01 Posts: 942 Member
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    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.

    Actually, the optimal diet for unicorns is skittles and ecstasy.
  • DragonSquatter
    DragonSquatter Posts: 957 Member
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    This really is not news. It is well known that calculating both "calories in" and "calories out" are very inexact sciences. That's why anyone who's counting calories needs to be ready to make adjustments depending on their results.

    THIS.
  • DesdemonaRose
    DesdemonaRose Posts: 190
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    The article in no way promotes losing weight without trying. Why do people always exagerate things? *sigh*
  • pcastagner
    pcastagner Posts: 1,606 Member
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    The article in no way promotes losing weight without trying. Why do people always exagerate things? *sigh*

    The editors, on the other hand, are a different story, and they chose their headline wisely. Let's not try to pretend this isn't published in the context of and referring to an ongoing debate.

    Also, lets not pretend that caloric value still and irrefutably presents the maximum energy yield of a given material. One cannot create energy out of nothing.
  • rwstoneman1
    rwstoneman1 Posts: 32 Member
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    'Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong' - this sounds like a title made up by someone who only want's to sell. Fair enough calorie counts are 'are based on a system of averages' but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Everyone is different, and as such it is to be expected that each individual will digest their food with varying efficiency - and therefore it is not unreasonable to think that one person may be able to extract more calories from a food than someone else, which would be an interesting topic for an article to discuss.

    However, I would say that this is not a reason for the author of the article to attack calorie counts and to imply that they are entirely unhelpful! As many have already said, perhaps people struggling with calorie counting for weight loss (or gain I suppose) are weighing out their food inaccurately (introducing an even larger error into what is already a 'flawed' calorific value), or maybe they are one of the unfortunate people who are able to digest their food more (or less) fully - if it truly is all based upon averages then it stands to reason that there will be people who exist at either end of the digestive spectrum!

    Also - it was an interesting decision to post this sort of article to a calorie counting website...

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