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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.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/01/27/0443210/why-the-calorie-is-broken
http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/01/28/1446244/why-the-calorie-is-broken
Pack your shit.
Then again, dupes of stupid stories have been with Slashdot since the beginning. It kind of makes you wonder what (if anything) the so-called "editors" of this site do other than take kickbacks from the likes of Hassleton and that d-bag over at Forbes.
Then again, there's an important social policy angle to the Slashdot editing "quality": It's a powerful argument that they should be paid less than minimum wage.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Nutrition is a subject for which everybody should understand the basics. Unfortunately, this is hard. Not only is there a ton of conflicting research about how to properly fuel your body, there's a multi-billion-dollar industry with financial incentive to muddy the waters. Further, one of the most basic concepts for how we evaluate food — the calorie — is incredibly imprecise. "Wilbur Atwater, a Department of Agriculture scientist, began by measuring the calories contained in more than 4,000 foods. Then he fed those foods to volunteers and collected their faeces, which he incinerated in a bomb calorimeter. After subtracting the energy measured in the faeces from that in the food, he arrived at the Atwater values, numbers that represent the available energy in each gram of protein, carbohydrate and fat. These century-old figures remain the basis for today's standards."
In addition to the measuring system being outdated, the amount of calories taken from a meal can vary from person to person. Differences in metabolism and digestive efficiency add sizable error bars. Then there are issues with serving sizes and preparation methods. Research is now underway to find a better measure of food intake than the calorie. One possibility for the future is mapping your internal chemistry and having it analyzed with a massive database to see what foods work best for you. Another may involve tweaking your gut microbiome to change how you extract energy from certain foods.
Oh and my captcha is pinhead which obviously refers to the editors.
... I read an article about that very topic not so long ago
http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/01/27/0443210/why-the-calorie-is-broken
Repost.
That is it. Dupe!
BlameBillCosby.com
This story was on the front-page yesterday, do you guys not even TRY to keep track of this shit?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Do you even read you own site from time to time?
The article has a point: the reason I am 400 lbs is because calories are counted wrong. I eat 10,000 calories a day. Due to the calorie being inaccurate I probably actually eat 13,400 calories or more. No wonder I am fat. I feel a lawsuit coming on!
Didn't we just do this?
Therefore, balancing calories in to Calories out is not so stupidly simple as it seems to the underweight layperson.
What about the previously slightly obese person and currently healthy weight person (by BMI measurement)? Because that's me. And even during the obese period, I never had any delusions about it not being as simple as balancing calories in and out. It was a matter of changing my mindset so that I was actually serious about the work involved.
Are they right that the number of calories you take in isn't exact? Of course. It's even harder to measure the number of calories out. Does this matter? Not in the least. They're good enough rough approximations. If you're trying to match your calories in to your calories out to a net -5 calories, you're doing it wrong. Aim for at least -500. Even if you're wrong by, say, 400 calories, you're still negative -100 and in the long term will lose weight. Sometimes you'll be wrong in the other direction and will be negative even more that 500 calories for that day. Chances are, in fact, that the long-term average will approximate what you're aiming for.
Calories are the units of measurement we have, and they work well enough. It even says so in the article. We've always know everyone's body is different. That has nothing to do with the calorie.
If you balance "calories in to Calories out" you're going to have a huge problem as 1 Calorie == 1000 calories.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The unit of energy in the mtric system is the Joule
with the typical metric multipliers = 1 KWhr is 3.6 MegaJoules
...a story got repeated. Guess it must be seriously rough to be seriously bored on your job, huh, scraping around for any possible distractions? It's no wonder the US economy and industry is going down the tubes. Sheesh!
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Wasn't this here like yesterday?
Yes, Marty. But you see, when they posted the story about the DeLorean, it created a warp in the time-space continuum. Since Mr. Fusion hasn't been invented yet, we can't go back in the past, and until we do, these things are going to continue to happen, putting more and more strain on the time-space continuum until it all ENDS WITH A BANG!
Doctor (Doc) Emmit Brown
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I eat closer to 10,000 Calories per week. I'm still fat, but not as fat as you.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
This is literally a dupe.
Know what I hate about stories like this one? It gives people who desperately need to accept reality and lose weight another excuse to say 'Oh well, I guess it's hopeless!' and just keep eating whatever they want, stay obese, and never even try. It's not even true; our understanding of food, calories, and digestion isn't so utterly 'broken' as apparently a vocal minority might have you believe, otherwise how could anyone ever control their weight, or not be malnourished, etc. This is a dumb story and should just be ignored.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
"We need both imperial and metric calories."
You nailed it. That's why Americans are 2.54 times fatter than the rest of the world.
Stories are submitted, read: "please look at this!", or "wouldn't this be a nice subject to discuss?"
Of course it's always possible there are multiple submitters, or submitters (part of the public, after all) that missed a previous story. THAT IS OKAY.
But with those submissions in hand, it would be the editor's job to check for previously posted stories, non-working links, spelling errors (well... at least obvious ones :-), etc. In this case, that would have been Timothy's job. Except on /., obviously...
That's almost a starvation diet, you've got a seriously screwed thyroid if you still have weight issues.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Reinventing science one unit at a time: Calories claims to be a shorthand for kcal
1. I'm shooting for 1800cal/day = 12,600 ~10,000 cal/week
2. I'm 240, and only starting to count calories, so I got a ways to go.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That is all.
Actually, no. This summary is, I think, better than the one posted yesterday for this identical topic. However, the answer to "I'm not quite happy with this summary" is to do it right the first time and fix it before posting it. Not to repost it the next day with different wording.
This isn't an update of breaking news, like yesterday we discovered the calorie was broken (ZOMG NOES!!1), and today President Obama held an emergency press conference to calm panic in the global markets about Big Macs falling below 100,000 calories a barrel*.
*For some reason, probably a disorder of some kind, I felt compelled to actually calculate how many calories would be in an (oil) barrel of Big Macs. The figure I came up with was 100,214, with caveats of course for variability in the caloric content, dimensions, and (un-accounted-for) compressibility of the Big Mac sandwich.
Nothing posted to
I thought this was going to be a scientific article about how the unit called a calorie is screwed up. I was hoping for a treatise on thermodynamics and standards and some new measurement technology. So sad to find out it was just about losing weight. Is it too much to expect a news site for nerds to geek out on units of measurement, without fretting about real-world applications?
Besides, if you're looking at real-world applications, how about looking at a nerdy version of it? Weight loss is just a mass balance problem. Just inhaling and exhaling loses weight. So as long as you poop out more than you eat, you will lose weight. How you do that might or might not involve counting calories. The article I linked to has an easier solution; just skip a meal every now and then. But that doesn't sell meal plans and gym memberships, so don't expect it to catch on.
The science is well established and the numbers are well known. Outside very narrow set of outliers it is well understood how many calories "go in" from which foods and how many "go out" through what activities.
As someone who was able to lose 65lbs of extra weight (from 200 to 135 lbs) using just those calorie counts, I can tell you that not only did the counts make sense in general, but they did correspond quite closely to the predicted weight loss per every unit of time (down to a single week).
The "calories" are no more broken than any other measure. The problem is - most people are not very good at counting, math, reading labels, and self control that is required to consistently manage intake and consistently engage in exercise to use excess energy. I know because I was one of those overweight (obese really) people who for years found it easier to blame "invalid science".
It's already fat people rage. That last comment says, "I'm fat and you skinny dicks don't know what it's like!"
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This story was also on the front of /. yesterday. WTF?
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
What does this even mean?!
Exercise doesn't do much for losing weight. It's great for building muscle. Have to interrupt hunger signals. A ketogenic diet worked for me, it might for you. Starving all the time is not a viable life strategy. Low calorie intake because all you eat are proteins that sate and fats that keep you full is plausible. Isn't sustainable for everyone, but if you're fat and haven't tried it, give it a shot.
A "a calorie is just a calorie" violates THE SECOND law of thermodynamics. Entropy in the body is actually not as complex as OP makes it out, but it is a huge factor that makes all the difference in the world
Then gallon is a unit of volume, not a unit of weight. I do agree that liter is the much better unit for volume, but it will still be that a liter of water weighs more than a liter of air at atmospheric pressure. If anything is broken then it is the senseless clinging of the US to the English unit system that even the English no longer use.
Do you mean exorcize?