The Truth ABout Calories: BBC
drosebud
Posts: 277 Member
Did anyone else watch this last night? What a load of twaddle!
They spent a load of time and money trying to "prove" that calories weren't accurate on packaging. Does anyone (apart from the presenter) really think this is an exact figure? That is why they say "typical" values.
They also had a lot of fun burning stuff with liquid oxygen just to prove how calorific it was. Had they burnt plastic bags with liquid oxygen this may have been even more impressive but also would have proved...nothing, apart from the fact that plastic also contains energy.
I confess I gave up before the end, so may have missed some revelations, but it was irritating me. I guess I am not the target audience.
They spent a load of time and money trying to "prove" that calories weren't accurate on packaging. Does anyone (apart from the presenter) really think this is an exact figure? That is why they say "typical" values.
They also had a lot of fun burning stuff with liquid oxygen just to prove how calorific it was. Had they burnt plastic bags with liquid oxygen this may have been even more impressive but also would have proved...nothing, apart from the fact that plastic also contains energy.
I confess I gave up before the end, so may have missed some revelations, but it was irritating me. I guess I am not the target audience.
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I watched the Cameron and Miliband interviews on Channel 4 instead. I have heard very mixed reviews about the show on calories. As with anything, calories are never going to be an exact science, but having a quantifiable value to put on things, however acurate, definitely helps me!0
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If was quite funny doing all the food calorie testing to reveal some estimates are over, some are under and some are very accurate. So the conslusion was it all averages out in the end. Thanks Sherlock!
The calories out part was quite interesting and at least it talked about the significance of daily activity as well as dedicated exercise. I always find it quite ironic the way the gym car park is always full. I get a mental image of someone driving to the gym, exercising for an hour, driving home, slobbing out on the sofa for the rest of the day and being surprised they aren't losing weight.
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Yes I saw it. Not many people at the start of it seemed to know what a calorie actually was, and I was surprised by than although not sure why lol.
Interesting to know that the packaged calorie information varied by +-10% which they said is within government guidelines but it all averages out - at first I thought they were going to say that all the vendors understated the calories, so that was a relief!
The bit about burning more calories simply by being active around the home was possibly the most useful, in that hopefully it will cause some people to think that they can burn a lot of calories without having to pay a gym membership and make the effort of going, which a lot of people will never do. In other words you can burn calories as part of a pretty normal day!
Not quite sure what the overall aim of the programme was though.. Did seem a bit muddled!0 -
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I did watch it, it didn't really give any revelations. I thought the bit about burning more calories doing housework v the gym was a bit disingenuous - what they didn't say was how long the gym work out was v how long they did housework for and was the gym burn calculated only for the time in the gym i.e an hour, or was it calculated over the same time period as the others?0
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I found the title was more about pulling in viewers rather than a description of the program content. It was ok viewing, but it all boiled down to eating the calories you burn - eat more than that and you get fat, eat less and you'll lose weight - nothing new there then.0
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There is a lot of idle fattys in this country, so if got one NHS abuser off there *kitten* by spelling out you need to move to burn off the pizzas you eat on a daily basis.. Then it did it's job.0
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I think it made a lot of people more aware which can only be a good thing. It'll take a lot more of it to effect a lifestyle change across the UK to reduce obesity levels but it's a start none-the-less.
I remember starting on here and the realisation of exactly how many calories are in stuff, people need to be educated about their food to make better decisions. There also needs to be more done regarding activity levels too.
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