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Sugar Addiction Myths
Replies
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janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
It wouldn't make any sense to talk about 'empty calories' as something to look for.
If you have too many caloreis and not enough nutrients, you need to avoid "empty calories".
On the other hand, if you just need calories, it doesn't matter if they are empty or not. You just need the calories. So, advice on how to get more calories won't suggest you look for empty calories, right? Because their being empty is irrelevant. The extra calories don't have to be empty. An avocado is as good as a bag of skittles when all you want is calories.4 -
Have a look at the links embedded in my post that you quoted. Those are articles published in scientific/academic journals that use the term "empty calories". Those articles are written by scientists/doctors for other scientists/doctors to read.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
Your complaint seems to be against doctors and scientists. They're the ones who decided the term was a useful one to use in writing for each other, and for educating the public about how to eat. If they had picked some other term, we'd be using that term in our posts. Personally, though, I don't find it's a difficult concept, and I understand what they mean.
I don't find it difficult. I find it to be less useful than an understanding of how a given food fits into an overall diet.
I am not convinced that doctors and scientists use this term when communicating with each other. Do some of them use it as a term when attempting to educate the general public on nutrition? Without a doubt. Lots of concepts are simplified when experts attempt to communicate with the public. Sometimes the result is helpful, sometimes it isn't.
If they want to use it, that's their business. Others are free to question it, discuss it, even reject it.
I wonder, maybe you're equating "empty calories" with forbidden foods or something. The fact that they're called "empty" doesn't mean no one should ever eat them. It just means that they provide calories but aren't a good source of the other things that almost everyone in the developed world needs in their diet. For those of us who don't need to increase our calorie intake, the medical and scientific consensus is to limit those foods and instead focus on eating foods that provide nutrients we do need more of.
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RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.2 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
I think when talking about the genreal adult population you're giving too much credit for knowledge of nutrition..2 -
Packerjohn wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
Given the fact 70% or so of the population is overweight or obese, for these individuals empty calories are something to avoid, or consume in very limited amounts. The 2% or so of the population who are athletes that need a bunch of calories to fuel their activities, sure consume some empty calories as appropriate. The other 25% or so of the population may be able to get by with 10-20% of caloric intake in "empty calories"..
Many of the public policy summits have some form of an open forum where they broadcast and respond to questions from the public. Interesting to hear the arguments on what the people will do. I've always been curious on what would happen if they invited say the marketing head of McDonald's.
This is a key root problem - lack of connection and communication. Bunch of academics postulating over a chosen set of words to get a majority of the population to group think and eat "healthy". People never respond to this well and will always seek the outlier to confirm personal bias - e.g. Michael Phelps eats 5000+kcals/day, so I can too...only forgetting to train 6 hours/day.0 -
These sugar threads. So tired of them but they just keep popping up.
Sorry. Having one of those days. I'll just go away now and leave you guys to it.7 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty," it's a dairy product which contains protein and calcium, among other things. Yes, it can be high calorie and not necessarily the best bang for the caloric buck, but it's not garbage, it's food. Compare it to processed "cheese food" made mostly from oils, and it starts looking even better.
I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand. I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.6 -
Have a look at the links embedded in my post that you quoted. Those are articles published in scientific/academic journals that use the term "empty calories". Those articles are written by scientists/doctors for other scientists/doctors to read.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
Your complaint seems to be against doctors and scientists. They're the ones who decided the term was a useful one to use in writing for each other, and for educating the public about how to eat. If they had picked some other term, we'd be using that term in our posts. Personally, though, I don't find it's a difficult concept, and I understand what they mean.
I don't find it difficult. I find it to be less useful than an understanding of how a given food fits into an overall diet.
I am not convinced that doctors and scientists use this term when communicating with each other. Do some of them use it as a term when attempting to educate the general public on nutrition? Without a doubt. Lots of concepts are simplified when experts attempt to communicate with the public. Sometimes the result is helpful, sometimes it isn't.
If they want to use it, that's their business. Others are free to question it, discuss it, even reject it.
I wonder, maybe you're equating "empty calories" with forbidden foods or something. The fact that they're called "empty" doesn't mean no one should ever eat them. It just means that they provide calories but aren't a good source of the other things that almost everyone in the developed world needs in their diet. For those of us who don't need to increase our calorie intake, the medical and scientific consensus is to limit those foods and instead focus on eating foods that provide nutrients we do need more of.
Well, not exactly. Journals are in constant competition with one another and profit based upon link hits, clicks, and advertising dollars when subscriptions run low. The editors at these journals deliberately insert common search terms to published articles to increase web hits and search algorithms. You have to be cautious about citing a peer-reviewed study as the reputation of the journal may be suspect.
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Once people realize that sugar is murder... the abuse and enslavement will end! Wake up people!!
PIXIE STICKS ARE MADE FROM REAL PIXIES YOU FOOLS!!
#downwithbigsugar #sugarispixies #thetruthwillsetyourfree #mightjustbealongworkdayandImbored
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Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
I think when talking about the genreal adult population you're giving too much credit for knowledge of nutrition..
I'm not talking about the general adult population. I'm talking about the specific discussion that is going on here.
With the general population it's essentially a debate about how best to educate people about nutrition. I'd say the approach of demonizing specific foods and not focusing more on context and what to include has not been all that helpful, and I also believe -- idealistically, perhaps -- that demanding people use their brains rather than talking down to them and making things as simplistic and stupid as possible (shop the perimeter, don't eat anything you can't pronounce) is preferable.
I also do think that people KNOW that they should eat vegetables and not overeat fast food or sugary treats, and no one does the latter because of lack of education or because they don't know the term "empty calories." They do because they want to and maybe (in my more idealistic days) because they wrongly believe that eating healthy is too hard to try because they'd have to give up everything they love. If they know they don't, maybe they'd eat better (and that means more calorie appropriate and, yeah, some vegetables).1 -
rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)1 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?6 -
rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.5 -
stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
It doesn't sound like "I should never have this," to me. In fact I've never read anything which used the term without saying they should be eaten only in moderation. You making up things that aren't part of the term isn't the fault of the term.6 -
I'm sorry if that person doesn't want this post to be quoted elsewhere but I just saw this in another thread and it's exactly this.stevencloser wrote: »macro4luv2 wrote: »PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »macro4luv2 wrote: »This documentary was as full of crap as processed food, I think most of the experts were actors. Diets are individual. I was done when they said sugar wasn't bad for you.....
Is sugar bad for you? You must have been watching the other netflix documentaries as well.
I'll clear that up... Processed sugar is bad for you. I do watch other netflix docs. and some are better than others...... lol
Still wrong.
I have a question - re sugar (regular white table sugar). I know its BAD bad bad bad, but if I eat one Teaspoon a day, it has only 4 calories, will it really hurt me? if that's all I eat in one day this 1 tsp of regular sugar. I mean that's not ALL I eat, but its like one item i'd like to enjoy. Some things just taste better with sugar. of course, that's about all the indulgences I would eat. otherwise I eat pretty balanced home made food that I make.
BAD bad bad bad. 4 times. She's overthinking about 1 goddamn teaspoon of sugar because of things like this.
These kinds of posts are A DAILY OCCURRENCE on here.13 -
stevencloser wrote: »I'm sorry if that person doesn't want this post to be quoted elsewhere but I just saw this in another thread and it's exactly this.stevencloser wrote: »macro4luv2 wrote: »PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »macro4luv2 wrote: »This documentary was as full of crap as processed food, I think most of the experts were actors. Diets are individual. I was done when they said sugar wasn't bad for you.....
Is sugar bad for you? You must have been watching the other netflix documentaries as well.
I'll clear that up... Processed sugar is bad for you. I do watch other netflix docs. and some are better than others...... lol
Still wrong.
I have a question - re sugar (regular white table sugar). I know its BAD bad bad bad, but if I eat one Teaspoon a day, it has only 4 calories, will it really hurt me? if that's all I eat in one day this 1 tsp of regular sugar. I mean that's not ALL I eat, but its like one item i'd like to enjoy. Some things just taste better with sugar. of course, that's about all the indulgences I would eat. otherwise I eat pretty balanced home made food that I make.
BAD bad bad bad. 4 times. She's overthinking about 1 goddamn teaspoon of sugar because of things like this.
These kinds of posts are A DAILY OCCURRENCE on here.
This is due to the fact that a lot of people now think that sugar is 4 times bad for you. They think sugar is one of the worst things you can eat. That is a recent opinion.
That opinion about sugar is a completely different thing than just saying sugar is "empty calories" which is what my mother used to tell me 35 years ago and just means that it's not nutritious. Which is what I understood it to mean when my mother said it and i was all of seven years old. So it can't be that difficult to interpret.6 -
-
nokanjaijo wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »I'm sorry if that person doesn't want this post to be quoted elsewhere but I just saw this in another thread and it's exactly this.stevencloser wrote: »macro4luv2 wrote: »PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »macro4luv2 wrote: »This documentary was as full of crap as processed food, I think most of the experts were actors. Diets are individual. I was done when they said sugar wasn't bad for you.....
Is sugar bad for you? You must have been watching the other netflix documentaries as well.
I'll clear that up... Processed sugar is bad for you. I do watch other netflix docs. and some are better than others...... lol
Still wrong.
I have a question - re sugar (regular white table sugar). I know its BAD bad bad bad, but if I eat one Teaspoon a day, it has only 4 calories, will it really hurt me? if that's all I eat in one day this 1 tsp of regular sugar. I mean that's not ALL I eat, but its like one item i'd like to enjoy. Some things just taste better with sugar. of course, that's about all the indulgences I would eat. otherwise I eat pretty balanced home made food that I make.
BAD bad bad bad. 4 times. She's overthinking about 1 goddamn teaspoon of sugar because of things like this.
These kinds of posts are A DAILY OCCURRENCE on here.
This is due to the fact that a lot of people now think that sugar is 4 times bad for you. They think sugar is one of the worst things you can eat. That is a recent opinion.
That opinion about sugar is a completely different thing than just saying sugar is "empty calories" which is what my mother used to tell me 35 years ago and just means that it's not nutritious. Which is what I understood it to mean when my mother said it and i was all of seven years old. So it can't be that difficult to interpret.
Apparently it is since there's daily threads by people who don't know the first thing about how weight management even works at a basic level due to misinformation purported by people who take sentences like "sugar is empty calories" and tell you to never have it because "empty calories make you fat and sick!".2 -
stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?3 -
Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html3 -
Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
As a wakeup call to all the people claiming you can't ever have any of those? Yeah.1 -
stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html
Agree, for someone significantly overweight, dropping pounds will generally improve health markers. However, the devil is in the details. Rather than just eating Big Macs and Cokes, here is what the subject did
During his 90-day diet, Mr Cisna stuck to a strict limit of 2,000 calories per day and stayed close to the recommended dietary allowances for nutrients. He had his students plan out each of his meals using the fast food franchise's online nutritional information, requiring that they follow the dietary restrictions he set out.
Similar with the Twinkie Diet:
Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.
www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html
In both examples some thought was given to nutrition.
I've looked at some of the diet logs on MFP where the person is claims to be eating a low number of calories, but fits in ice cream, cookies, alcohol,etc daily. While these things are on the log, you don't see a serving of fruit or veggies for weeks.
4 -
rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much?
I got involved because one of the posts to janejellyroll rubbed me the wrong way -- it seemed to be suggesting that disagreeing that the term was helpful meant that someone either was ignorant about what it meant (obviously not) or didn't care about nutrition (again, obviously not) and took a condescending tone as if those using the term were more knowledgeable in general. So I popped in to disagree with that and try to clarify what was being discussed.
I actually don't much mind the use of "empty calories" -- I think it's a dumb term in some usages, but it doesn't bother me any more than "junk food" does (which is not at all). So you have jumped to some inaccurate assumptions about my feelings.
Oh, I also continued participating because those defending and explaining it seemed to be using it incorrectly even according to the sources that we being cited. For example, ignoring that it applies to solid fats, and that it refers to ingredients, not foods.
I don't think discussing the meanings of terms we use is unhelpful -- I think it contributes to communication. You may disagree, and that's fine.
3 -
Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
No one ever recommends that.
I think understanding that calories are all that matter for weight loss is useful in clearing away the superstition about how it works. It does not make it difficult for me to also say that what we eat of course matters and that I personally think eating a healthful diet is important and makes it easier for the vast majority of people to avoid weight gain.
Surely you don't think lying to people and telling them they must eat healthfully in order to avoid being fat is a worthwhile thing to do?
I find this idea that acknowledging the truth -- you can lose weight on a ridiculously unhealthy, not recommended diet -- is confusing or will cause people who would not otherwise eat such a diet to do so to be quite odd.
What was discussed upthread (not by me specifically) is that obesity is sufficiently bad for you that losing weight is good for health in most cases no matter how you do it. (I'd further say that worrying about people taking the Twinkie diet as a recommendation is funny, since most could not sustain a Twinkie diet long anyway -- I certainly could not. I always think those concerned about others eating all junk food must secretly want to themselves, as I think it would be a horrible, unpleasant diet no one would willingly choose if they had the slightest concern for calories or knowledge about/exposure to good food.)0 -
rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
To be fair, this is the debate area. We're all here because we like debating about whatever the topic is (or because we dislike it and enjoy provoking ourselves).4 -
stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html
Nobody is morbidly obese off chicken and broccoli.6 -
RAD_Fitness wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html
Nobody is morbidly obese off chicken, rice and broccoli.
IF you say so.0 -
stanmann571 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html
Nobody is morbidly obese off chicken, rice and broccoli.
IF you say so.
Find one person who is overweight off of only lean meat and dark green veggies.
You'd need to be eating over 5lbs of chicken a day to even break 1,800 calories.3 -
RAD_Fitness wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html
Nobody is morbidly obese off chicken, rice and broccoli.
IF you say so.
Find one person who is overweight off of only lean meat and dark green veggies.
You'd need to be eating over 5lbs of chicken a day to even break 1,800 calories.
You left out the rice...0 -
RAD_Fitness wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »RAD_Fitness wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »nokanjaijo wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »
No, they can be unneeded in one situation and needed in another. If you are, say, Michael Phelps in training, you can't possibly get enough calories to stay well nourished unless you eat a lot of high-calorie, low-fiber foods. If you are an average Westerner, you're in a different situation. For you, candy is "empty calories," nutritionally speaking. Similarly, glucose can be a lifesaver for a diabetic in insulin shock or a patient in a coma, and doctors don't refer to it as "empty calories" in those circumstances.Carlos_421 wrote: »
It's routinely used in the health care and nutritional fields. For example:I'm thinking the term "empty calories" was invented by the "clean eaters"...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24200654
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa14/dl/health-status-behaviors.pdf
There's a recognized, common understanding of what the phrase means - it's basically a short way to talk about foods that add unneeded extra calories but little else. Sometimes it's put in quotation marks. ETA: It's never used when the calories the food supplies are needed or helpful, only when the extra calories are unneeded and possibly detrimental.
So if I eat gummy bears pre or post workout they don't have empty calories because helpful but if I eat them during a movie they do have empty calories because unneeded?
They're the same gummy bears...either the calories are empty or not.
Sorry if that seems inconsistent to you, but your quarrel is with the doctors and scientists who use the phrase that way.
If whether or not a calorie is "empty" depends on the circumstances, it seems like it would be more helpful to address the circumstances and help people make informed choices instead of focusing on the foods themselves.
I think the point is that the calories are empty in both cases. Sometimes all you need are calories. In that situation, empty calories are fine and welcome. If you aren't in need of calories or if you are in need of certain micronutrients, empty calories are a bad idea.
If you ordered a book and then received an empty box in the mail, that would be bad. If you need to move, you would want an empty box.
Empty boxes can be good or bad, but I have never once heard somebody say, "It's not an empty box because you have a box and boxes are useful so the fact that you have a box means it's not an empty box."
I hope I never do, to be honest.
Your example makes perfect sense, it's just that you usually hear "empty calories" tossed around as something to avoid, where an empty box is just a tool.
For a VAST majority of people, yes empty calories should be very limited.
Depends on what you mean by "very limited." Many take that to mean "oh, no, I better not have any."
I have a little cheese most days. Often in my vegetable omelet in the morning (a little feta makes it even more enjoyable for me), sometimes as a dessert after dinner (I enjoy having an oz of an interesting artisan cheese), sometimes as part of some other meal. The total calories are not huge and, more significantly, I have an overall nutritious and calorie appropriate diet. I understand that the cheese is an accent/indulgence, but don't particularly think it is in a different category than many other things I eat (adding olive oil to vegetables or a salad rather than eating them as low cal as possible, having some good bread if I happen to on that day, so on), and treating it as inherently different rather than focusing on my diet as a whole makes no difference to me.
That way of thinking about it also tends to make people think they ate well if they had no "empty calories" and poorly if they had some, even if the latter day was overall better in other ways (hit a protein target, ate lots of vegetables, had more fiber, etc.). I think it's a really simplistic way of thinking about nutrition that might not be bad as a starting point for kids, but when talking to adults and there's no context given I think it's pretty unhelpful, especially if you are talking to people -- as here -- who know about nutrition and may indeed be focused on things like endurance sports.
There's a spectrum. Cheese isn't "empty,"
Again, the definition that keeps being referred to from the various "scientific" and gov't sources defines empty calories as "added sugar and solid fat." Pizza is a huge supplier of empty calories according to these sources and, yes, it's because of the cheese. For the most part, foods are not empty calories, they contain empty calories, and yes cheese would be mostly empty calories according to the definition in question. Same with a cherry cobbler which, of course, contains cherries and a few other ingredients that have nutrients.
(I don't particularly agree with this use of "empty calories," but that's what we are talking about.)I don't think anyone is advocating for "empty calories" as a scientific term. It's a useful shorthand in context, and the context isn't all that difficult to understand.
We are debating how useful it is. I don't find it all that useful when it's easy to be more specific and to better focus on overall context.I can eat an 80 calorie orange or the same calories in jelly beans - the jelly beans are empty calories, because oranges contain a plethora of nutrients in addition to calories, and jelly beans contain very few.
I have carried sports jelly beans (which are largely just jelly beans with some electrolytes that are overpriced) on long runs and a marathon and found them helpful. Carrying an orange wouldn't work as it's difficult and peeling would not be easy for me when running (although an orange would actually taste good if someone handed me one at a stop -- I'm in favor of that!). Saying it's bad to eat the jelly beans in that context, empty calories, is not reasonable, IMO.As for your hypothetical person who thinks a good day is one in which no empty calories were consumed regardless of the appropriateness of their diet by any other metric - there's no term which is idiot-proof. A determined idiot can misunderstand and misuse any term.
Agreed, but why not focus on things more likely to be helpful, like meeting overall nutritional goals and not overeating. The effect is to limit foods that are high cal/low nutrient anyway. People seem to be equating the questioning of the term "empty calorie" with not caring about nutrition, and that's entirely false. (I don't quite remember how this subthread started.)
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that's not rude, but why do you care so much? Perhaps it's not the perfect term. Whooptie. It is helpful for some people in some situations. It doesn't have to be a perfect term to be useful. If you don't find it useful, ignore it.
How is an obsession with telling others what words are wrong more appropriate than an obsession with telling them what foods are wrong?
It was talked about up top. Empty calories sounds like "I should never ever have this". Can lead to disordered thinking about foods, failure, ED and whathaveyou. Any evaluation of food that does not take overall diet into account is IMO and many others' opinions, useless at best and counterproductive to dangerous at worst.
And throwing out things like losing weight on something like The Twinkie Diet doesn't?
While Moderation is the Key. The reality is that living at a healthy weight/BF on "The Twinkie Diet" or The McDonald's Diet. Is healthier long term than being morbidly obese on lean chicken and Broccoli.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534737/I-thought-I-going-die-Man-lost-37lbs-eating-McDonalds-three-months-walking-45-minutes-day.html
Nobody is morbidly obese off chicken, rice and broccoli.
IF you say so.
Find one person who is overweight off of only lean meat and dark green veggies.
You'd need to be eating over 5lbs of chicken a day to even break 1,800 calories.
You left out the rice...
He said chicken and broccoli0
This discussion has been closed.
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