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

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-sci-calories-20120627,0,3966421.story

by rf45 • 14 years ago

29 43 14 years ago

latimes.com

jbwyme• 14 years ago

Is this news? I was under the impression that it was fairly common knowledge that all calories aren't created equally.

martythemaniak• 14 years ago

It is definitely not common knowledge amongst the general population.

I believe low-carb diets (low carb, slow carb, paleo, etc) are well understood and praised amongst people with interest in nutrition and fitness, but it's still slowly making it's way into the general population.

mertd3• 14 years ago

> It is definitely not common knowledge amongst the general population.

For a good reason. First and foremost, general population just needs to eat less, a lot less. Once we get past that point, macro-nutrient composition can be the next level of diet optimization.

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

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 law, which tells us that energy is conserved, so if a system takes in more energy than it expends, the energy contained in the system has to increase. If that system happens to be our fat tissue, than the fat tissue accumulates fat. That’s the logic. So if we eat more than we expend, we get fatter and the logic turns this around to say that we get fat because we eat more than we expend. And so, overeating and sedentary behavior are the causes. This is the logic that leads virtually every government health agency and independent health organization (the AHA, the AMA, you name it) to have some variation of this World Health Organization statement on its website or in its promotional material: “The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed on one hand, and calories expended on the other hand.”

kyberias6• 14 years ago

I don't understand how this quote from Taubes proves anything. If I stop eating, I will lose weight and eventually die. Also, if I eat more, I will gain weight. Thus calories must have SOMETHING to do with weight, right? I think Taubes is fighting a straw man here: I haven't heard anyone argue that eaten calories are stored in 1:1 ratio. But they have some causal relationship.

neutronicus2• 14 years ago

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

planetguy• 14 years ago

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 things is that we're busy fighting a war against dumb fad diets.

But once you acknowledge the basic calories in vs calories out principle, you can start thinking about what foods make it easiest to maintain a caloric deficit. Even the most 'traditional' of health authorities acknowledge that this is a factor, which is why they won't say "Hey, whatever, eat three slices of chocolate cake a day and nothing else". The first factor is making sure you get sufficient nutrition along with your calories, the second is making sure you feel full while maintaining a caloric deficit. There's a growing acknowledgement that low-carb diets can help with both of these.

This study suggests a third factor: that eating a low-carb diet can actually boost your base metabolic rate. How? Not sure. It would be interesting to see whether it gets replicated in a larger scale study.

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

Except that many have been trying to prove they are created equal. http://www.slashfood.com/2010/11/09/eat-twinkies-lose-weight...

dnlhoust3• 14 years ago

It should be noted that a kcal /is/ still a kcal; The adaption your body takes after being given different levels of macronutrients doesn't change that if you eat more than you expend, you will put on weight.

Also, I'm surprised that they didn't trial a 60% protein, 20% fat and 20% carb diet!

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

Actually, no. Here's an article that explains why this is not the case:

http://garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/

dnlhoust3• 14 years ago

While an interesting read, it feels like I just read some long winded analogy describing metabolism?

In the parent comment, I'm including bodily factors like metabolic reactions within "expend". The degree to which this makes a difference in overall expenditure is the un-quantifiable part; but adjusting your diet further to counter this lack of expenditure will still have the same effect. It still is a numbers game in my mind.

K2h2• 14 years ago

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 to me) metabolic process to convert what I eat into energy that my body can use.

For me, an individuals metabolic rate may be roughly proportional to kcal intake, but it is not the same thing, and it is different for different food types, combinations, and for different people.

I liked the article - even though I am not a dietician, I do think there is something wrong about the Adkins diet.. not healthy.

dnlhoust3• 14 years ago

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 an inconstant value.

Thank you, by the way. I enjoyed the opportunity to think though this

neutronicus2• 14 years ago

The trouble is that your digestive process isn't necessarily time-independent, so the same piece of food could represent different energy fluxes into your body if eaten at different times, and the calorie expenditure of your body isn't necessarily time-independent, so the same exercise (including just sitting around) could represent different energy fluxes out of your body if performed at different times.

Without actually measuring energy fluxes, "a kcal is a kcal" is meaningless.

rprasad4• 14 years ago

The point of the original study was: 1) For weight loss, how many calories you eat (or don't eat) matters more than any other factor. 2) Once the weight loss period has ended, the type of diet (i.e., the balance of calorie types consumed) matters more for maintaining the new weight and overall health.

aresant• 14 years ago

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-glycemic diet — which he has recommended for a long time — did not seem to have these problems, he said, making it the best bet."

"A low glycemic index diet is rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and is designed to prevent sharp spikes in blood sugar"

pkghost• 14 years ago

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

*edited, more to the point.

tomrod• 14 years ago

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 it may haunt you now for the rest of your lives.

breadbox• 14 years ago

The assumption that "natural language grammars" and "logic" are even on speaking terms will only bring you frustration, as you rail against perfectly correct constructions while the world rightly ignores you.

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

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...

rprasad4• 14 years ago

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".

kyberias6• 14 years ago

Didn't this study have a terribly small sample size? 13 adults were divided into 3 groups. That is 4 people in each group. There must be major individual differences how their bodies react to different diets during a four week period. I don't see how this is statistically significant.

dgottlieb• 14 years ago

13 men and 8 women for 21 total people. The article also mentioned on multiple occasions the small sample size.

ImprovedSilence• 14 years ago

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...?

rprasad4• 14 years ago

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.

somesaba• 14 years ago

Really? I thought this was known already...you needed to do research to discover this? Now I didn't read the article, but if they did research to discover to what extent the exact differences result in, then that's fine I guess...but judging from the title that's not the case.

mast• 14 years ago

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.

kyberias6• 14 years ago

See: this is such a hot topic that Taubes-fans actually down-vote you without bothering to discuss or present some arguments. You brought some valuable information to the discussion and you got downvoted for that. Hurray, HN!

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

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