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It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

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Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#31

Post by K2h »

dnlhoust wrote: post #15
K2h wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kcal may still be a kcal when verified in a bomb calorimeter - I believe for food they do it the same way everyone else does it: Put it in pure oxygen atmosphere, and light that baby on fire, measure the increase in temperature in a controlled environment, and the 'heat' produced is expressed in kcal. now, my body does not have an active flame, and I don't have a combustion engine in my stomach. I use a (mysterious t…

You are right that you have to adjust for metabolic rate; and while the content of your diet will have an effect on that rate (meaning getting an entirely accurate assessment of your expenditure is near impossible) the kcal value maintains; I suppose it's my mentality that you adjust your eating habits based on your diet contents and its effect on metabolism, to match the kcal values, rather than viewing the kcal as…

This dialog reminded me of a rumor I heard awhile ago about trying to measuring efficiency of Lance Armstrong (competitive cyclist). A brief search gave me [1], but I'm sure there are better articles out there. My big take away is that even with modern technology and understanding there is just so much we still don't fully understand - especially about the human body and processes.

[1] http://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/09/coyle-and-armstrong-...

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#32

Post by mast »

Marion Nestle of the Politics of Food, wrote about this study early this week (http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/06/does-where-calories-come...)

She's skeptical. Basically, she says you cannot really draw any reliable conclusions becuase of the short, highly controlled conditions of the study.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#33

Post by mathewsanders »

neutronicus wrote: post #24
crazygringo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of people who insist that calories must be equal in terms of weight loss/gain, or else there would be violation of the laws of thermodynamics or something... To quote Gary Taubes, who tries to puncture this myth: The reason people believe we get fat because of overeating and sedentary behavior is because they believe the laws of thermodynamics somehow dictate this to be true. In particular the first l…

People talking like you can perform a thermodynamic analysis of nutrition is definitely a pet peeve as a physicist.

+1 it drives me crazy too. Calories are a unit of stored energy. Wood has plenty of calories (great for fires) but if you eat a bunch of bark you're not going to store that weight, you're just going to make yourself sick.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#34

Post by bad_user »

mertd wrote: post #25
bad_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like meat and meat keeps me full for longer periods of time, while at the same time whenever I eat rice, or potatoes, or pasta (without any meat) I feel hunger in 2 hours tops. I don't know if this is a property of high-fat versus high-carb diets, but either way it's a mistake to think in absolute terms. I also disagree that we have a weight problem because "we eat too much". I lost more than 40 pounds by cutting a…

I meant eating less in terms of calories.

I know what you meant, but I don't think this strategy works, mostly because "eating less calories" has to be a side-effect of a healthy diet not the goal, otherwise it isn't sustainable.

I tried it myself and it didn't work. The mental pressure, the guilt when you go wrong, the bad moods you have when you can't satisfy some urge - all of these are culminating with depression, until finally you give up because being overweight suddenly doesn't seem so bad.

Besides I've seen some statistics with the growth of the average caloric intake in the past couple of decades, compared with the growth of sugar intake and the growth of sugar in our daily diet has a much, much better correlation with the rise of obesity and diabetes.

People should be encouraged to stop eating crap that they don't even like and start eating good and healthy food.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#35

Post by travisp »

kyberias wrote: post #29
travisp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you stop eating you will lose some weight and die. But, you can die of starvation while obese. In animal studies, it is possible to reduce calories and the animals won't lose weight or to add a lot of extra calories and not become obese. Calories have something to do with it because they are one part of the equation. Calories in does equal calories out. Calories In = Calories Stored + Calories Expended. But,…

Got it. I've heard that theory before but never have I seen any substantial evidence. I accept that the food I eat might have some effect on my "hunger" and "energy level". Which in turn could make me eat more or exercise less. That doesn't really have anything to do with calories per se. Many other causes have the same effect, e.g. psychological or hormonal situations. However, the real argument seems to be that wha…

The idea that carbohydrates impact fat storage through insulin is one of the main arguments put forward by Taubes in his book, and he provides a lot of evidence and studies to back up his assertion. He may be wrong (and he somewhat acknowledges this and calls for proper studies to be done), but it's worth reading if you want to understand what the argument is.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#36

Post by crazygringo »

tomrod wrote: post #8

Argh! The caption in this article makes a grammatical mistake that is a pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I read or hear it! An example: "Not all the donuts are eaten." "All the donuts are not eaten." Assume some donuts have been eaten. Which is correct? As I understand English, the first is logically correct, but the second is typically used. I apologize now to all of you who have never noticed this before, as…

When someone wants to negate the idea of a sentence, the negation is often placed in a spot that makes it unclear as to whether the sentence is being negated, or merely a smaller part of the sentence is being negated. This is a common occurrence in many languages and dialects.

Of course it can be confusing, and sometimes even downright contradictory if you think too hard about it. But language is flexible, and most people just don't write with such rigorous logic. So, just mentally realize that, given the context, the most likely interpretation is:

"all calories are not alike" = NOT("all calories are alike")

If this is still haunting you, just do what Allie does:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#37

Post by pkghost »

aresant wrote: post #6

Summary: "Subjects burned more than 300 additional calories on average when on the very low-carbohydrate dietcompared with the low-fat diet." "Subjects burned 200 additional calories on the low glycemic index diet than on the low-fat diet." "Ludwig also didn't recommend a very low-carb diet even though it offered the best metabolic edge. Some measurements suggested it could be risky for the heart, he said." "The low-…

Insulin not only causes your body to store more energy as fat, but also interferes with memory formation.

*edited, more to the point.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#38

Post by rprasad »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #19

This is very much...not new news whatsoever. I thought it was pretty common knowledge you need different types of calories. This piece also seems to be pretty marketing/weight loss heavy, as opposed to proper nutrition. (I think for an active person, a proper diet is around 40% calories from protein, 30% from both fat and carbs?) or do I have protein and carbs swapped...?

The point was more than the caloric intake should be balanced across carbs, fats, and proteins (the exact ratios would vary depending on need). In other words, low-carb or low-fat were worse overall than a diet which did not artificially deflate consumption of fat or carbs.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#39

Post by rprasad »

planetguy wrote: post #27
crazygringo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of people who insist that calories must be equal in terms of weight loss/gain, or else there would be violation of the laws of thermodynamics or something... To quote Gary Taubes, who tries to puncture this myth: The reason people believe we get fat because of overeating and sedentary behavior is because they believe the laws of thermodynamics somehow dictate this to be true. In particular the first l…

Yes as and no. Fundamentally weight gain/loss really is a matter of calories in vs calories out; if you're burning more calories than you're consuming then you're gonna be losing weight. It's akin to saying that all you need to do to win at golf is to hit the ball really hard towards the hole -- true, but not necessarily good advice. The reason sometimes we put too much emphasis on the basic-thermodynamics side of th…

Other studies have explained/tried to explain how the low-carb diet (i.e., Atkins) work. The basis gist of those studies is that the body burns fat reserves instead of carbs. Burning fat requires more energy than burning carbs, which increases the body's BMR.

Re: It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

#40

Post by rprasad »

tomrod wrote: post #8

Argh! The caption in this article makes a grammatical mistake that is a pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I read or hear it! An example: "Not all the donuts are eaten." "All the donuts are not eaten." Assume some donuts have been eaten. Which is correct? As I understand English, the first is logically correct, but the second is typically used. I apologize now to all of you who have never noticed this before, as…

I think what he's saying is that the noun is poorlly chosen. The proper, unambiguous sentence should have been: "some of the donuts were eaten" or "some of the donuts were not eaten."

The "not" is correctly used in either case, except in the edge case of "all" or "none".

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