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Why the Calorie Is Broken (arstechnica.com)
New submitter ami.one writes: Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley explain how we are still using a century old method for measuring the calories in our food and the calories spent in different human activities. Essentially, there is a very big difference between burning stuff in a bomb calorie-meter and the extremely complex ways our body extracts energy from food. In fact, the exact process of digestion is yet to be understood sufficiently at a micro level, and years from being replicated to any close degree. Plus, the way our bodies spend calories for a given activity is hugely different from the way a car consumer gasoline and dependent on a number of parameters — some of which are not even known currently. Therefore, balancing calories in to Calories out is not so stupidly simple as it seems to the underweight layperson . Update: 01/28 22:09 GMT by T : Sorry for the duplicate post; it was a long night.
But we know why. Useless staff.
If you're going to complain about misunderstandings among laypeople, let's start with the proper name for the unit used pretty much everywhere: you're talking about kilocalories when you talk to a layperson in the US about the "calorie".
Second, even if in a typical case we could perfectly balance energy intake to activities, it's been shown that many bodies are atypical. We are not feeding spherical cows of uniform density in a vacuum. These are people with more or less muscle mass, different things going on in their endocrine systems, different overall body mass, different drug intakes, different vitamin and protein levels and sources, and different genetics.
The real-world test for a dietary plan is whether it helps you maintain your health and desired weight. There is enough research to recommend some alternatives as definitely better than others, but there's been no definitive perfect diet. Ultimately the perfect diet is one that allows you to be both healthy and satisfied, and that it can't do on its own. The dietary plan can contribute, but it also takes other lifestyle factors.
This story was on the front-page yesterday, do you guys not even TRY to keep track of this shit?
No, they don't.
Here's a typical working day of slashdot "editors":
Browsing the submissions: 3 hours.
Clicking on links provided with the submissions: 2 hours.
Trying to find the most misleading headlines for a story: 2 hours
Finding the most misleading quote in one of the related articles: 3 hours
Thinking of a clever remark to add to the quotes and fail: 5 hours
Hey, and even slashdot editors need to eat, drink and sleep, so there's no time to check what was posted yesterday.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.