The Hidden Truths about Calories

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/27/the-hidden-truths-about-calories/

by jamesbritt • 14 years ago

239 182 14 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

rm9995• 14 years ago

Good article on why counting calories precisely is pointless and misleading. Another factor is that food labels are often incorrect - the FDA allows them to be up to 20% off in the USA. Even if you could figure out how many calories you consume and absorb, estimating the number of calories you burn is even more difficult.

MichaelApproved2• 14 years ago

Counting calories might be misleading but it's definitely not pointless. You still want to target a range of calories during the day and not go over it. Even with the inaccuracies of the system, counting calories is still part of keeping healthy.

sliverstorm5• 14 years ago

I rely on more of a feedback loop. I eat when I'm hungry, and I monitor simple metrics like my weight, sense of well being, endurance, and physique. I adjust my food intake (but still keying off when I'm hungry), and watch the results.

kwantam• 14 years ago

Absolutely. Counting calories is a fast feedback loop (count each day, compare to your target, increase or decrease your intake as appropriate); you need a slow feedback loop to set the intermediate target against your actual goal (in this case, say, scale weight). The accuracy of the fast feedback loop isn't critical since you have a pretty accurate slow feedback loop to correct it.

The general approach of partitioning problem solving into fast/inaccurate and slow/accurate is very useful, since it's generally hard to make something that's simultaneously fast and accurate.

Note one other interesting thing about this approach: you can do unit conversions! That is, I can measure something with different units than the thing I'm trying to control. Our reference is body weight, but what we measure is caloric intake: the function we use to slowly adjust the calorie target as a function of our weight has units of calories per body mass.

rm9995• 14 years ago

How do you know what range of calories to target? Or that the labels are correct? How many calories are in the burger from that food truck? That the calories you are eating are healthy? I agree with you that it's good to know roughly how many calories are in your food, but literally counting calories during a diet can be counterproductive. Most people won't count calories in the longterm, so it ends up being a bandaid solution that doesn't encourage lifestyle changes. Ultimately listening to your body (for me this includes semi-regularly weighing myself and checking my body fat %) gives a better idea of how much you should be eating and leads to a stable, longterm solution.

speleding• 14 years ago

If you add up all the error margins in the article (and they don't even mention that the FDA allows published calorie counts to be off by 20%) you end up with an error margin that makes the resulting number pointless.

I know the hacker in you wants a number to measure but if you know anything about math at all you should concede that calculating numbers which such a high error margin is indeed pointless.

heretohelp15• 14 years ago

>Good article on why counting calories precisely is pointless and misleading.

It's really not, you just need to eat healthy relatively unprocessed food for which it is reasonable to estimate calories and start with a baseline calorie target and adjust according to your goals as you go.

This subject happens to be uh...my job...so I can answer questions if anyone has any.

rm9995• 14 years ago

> relatively unprocessed food for which it is reasonable to estimate calories

What I got out of the article is unprocessed foods are the least accurate when it comes to calorie counts because they aren't digested as easily.

What's your job BTW?

JoeAltmaier• 14 years ago

The article seems to contradict that - unprocessed foods are the hardest to estimate. Pounding, grinding, cooking free available calories, bringing them closer to the published number.

vijayr2• 14 years ago

1. The comment above says "upto 20%" - that seems a bit high, no? Is it not possible to make better estimate of calories?

2. Any thoughts/experience with raw foods? (also juicing, water fasting etc? someone documented their water fast, I can't remember the URL now. It sounded dangerous, but also awesome to know the results)

3. For a moderately active person, which is better? Eating 2 huge meals a day, or 5-6 small meals?

Thank you.

epo• 14 years ago

OK, my take on this is that I need a framework to operate within. The frameworks I have chosen are Weight Watchers because it gives me a daily food budget which I can fine tune depending on whether I think I am losing enough weight (0.5-1Kg/week). The specific food choices are informed by Glycaemic Index principles which ranks foods based on the body's glucose response and hence provides a measure of how effective the food item is at keeping you feeling fed. I get the impression that GI is not highly regarded in the USA, if so why is this?

mistercow3• 14 years ago

I really think the "unprocessed food" thing is a heuristic that has lost its power. The problem is that it is completely possible to make unprocessed food that is terribly unhealthy. And unfortunately, as with processed food, the cheapest ways to make unprocessed food tastier also make it less healthy. Keep in mind that honey, which many people would consider "unprocessed", is very nearly identical to HFCS-55 (and no, there is not good evidence that the slight differences between them significantly impact their health effects).

So early on, "avoid processed food" was a good way to guess at which foods were likelier to be healthy without having to actually examine them closely. But the heuristic is highly exploitable (i.e. you can trick people into thinking unhealthy food is healthy by making it from "unprocessed" ingredients), and in a relatively free market, it was inevitable that it would be exploited.

Now, if you advise people to either eat raw, unmodified ingredients, or make their own food out of raw unmodified ingredients, then that will still help them. But I think most people hear "avoid processed food" and think "Oh, I should buy these cookies that are made of whole grains and honey", and that is not helpful advice anymore.

mistercow3• 14 years ago

Whether or not the raw numbers correspond 1:1 to actual calories doesn't really matter. What matters is that you adjust your caloric intake based on whether you are gaining or losing weight, and which direction you need to be moving in. Even though the relative amounts aren't necessarily exactly correct, it gives you a basis for adjustment.

The same goes for counting calories burned while exercising. You may not be able to figure out an exact count, but you can get in the ballpark, and that means that you can then adjust your habits so that you are moving toward your goal.

Counting the calories precisely will not allow you to scientifically formulate an optimal diet and exercise plan on paper without experimenting on yourself. It will, however, anchor you and protect you against fudging the numbers in the direction of letting you eat more or exercise less.

You could, I suppose, use an unbiased rounding system to try and use only as many bits of calorie information as you believe are significant, but that's a lot more work for very little theoretical gain.

enraged_camel5• 14 years ago

>>Whether or not the raw numbers correspond 1:1 to actual calories doesn't really matter. What matters is that you adjust your caloric intake based on whether you are gaining or losing weight, and which direction you need to be moving in. Even though the relative amounts aren't necessarily exactly correct, it gives you a basis for adjustment.

But that's the point: you cannot make accurate adjustments unless you also keep track of the type of food you eat (cooked, processed, raw, etc.). Because you have no way of knowing whether you gained weight due to taking too many calories, or because the food you ate last week was processed and cooked.

unreal373• 14 years ago

Fascinating article. Well worth the read if you have an interest in diets and nutrition.

Why is it scientists can't get an accurate grasp on the calorie content of foods, and how our bodies process them?

heretohelp15• 14 years ago

It's immensely complicated.

grhino• 14 years ago

and from the article, can vary greatly by individual

unreal373• 14 years ago

It seems to me that the effect of food on the body has been studied for at least 50 years.

No matter how complicated it is, shouldn't there be a few basic things everyone can agree on? It seems that each new diet (based on scientific principles) contradicts the last. Low fat, low carb, low calorie, vegan, no dairy, no wheat...

They can't even agree on whether a calorie matters. (i.e. is eating 100 calories of steak vs eating 100 calories of sugar the same?)

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Why is it scientists can't get an accurate grasp on the calorie content of foods, and how our bodies process them?

I just posted another article that talks about the difficulty of doing human nutrition studies. Way back in the 1970s, I saw a television news magazine report about a group of nutrition researchers who found human volunteer subjects who were willing to be shut away from their normal life for weeks (months?) at a time (being paid for their time, as I recall) in conditions under which EVERYTHING the subjects ate was weighed to the nearest gram. The TV report even showed researchers washing crumbs off plates with distilled water so that the subjects ate every morsel of their measured meals. That was part of a study designed to elicit new information about human nutrition. Alas, I've never heard of results of that study. (Probably, the sample size was too small to have adequate statistical power to reach any firm conclusions.) This will always be the problem with human nutrition studies: people think they remember how much they eat, but often enough they don't really remember in detail, and the usual study methodology for a nutrition study is to rely on subject self-reports. If the sample size is extremely large, sometimes there is enough statistical power to pick up a few tantalizing signals from masses of carefully gathered data, but then there is still the whole issue of how well actual human beings apply advice based on the studies that have been done to date.

I am amazed at how much day-by-day obesity in very young people I now see in my town. I never imagined that most Americas in my generation or the younger generation would be as bulky as they now are. And the United States isn't even at the top of the world league tables in obesity. People all around the world today have eating tendencies based on human beings evolving in conditions of food scarcity, but there are fewer and fewer places each decade that still suffer from food scarcity. (Ethiopia is still poor, but it is now a food-exporting country.) The challenge for humankind in the remaining years of my life will be learning how to do what is "unnatural" and eat less than what is readily available to eat.

NLips• 14 years ago

"And the United States isn't even at the top of the world league tables in obesity."

True, but only just (according to the WHO). The only countries that beat it on overweight or obese percentages of population are Saudi Arabia, Panama, or have a population under one million.

SpikeDad2• 14 years ago

Perhaps they can but until science can unlock the psychological interaction of people and food they're not going to change anyone's food habits.

If you look at the progress of medicine with respect to addictive behaviors, there seems to be very little progress. I believe food eating behaviors are very similar. In fact I think obesity is the hardest addiction to overcome simply because you can't eliminate food from your diet as you can eliminate all other addictive substances.

I know I've lost 30-40% of my weight several times and kept it off for a number of years but it always returns due to my inability to resist the psychological pressure to over eat and/or eat dense caloric foods.

creamyhorror• 14 years ago

This is very interesting. "Calories in, calories out" has long been an established principle and topic of debate & discussion among those who follow nutrition, and while it largely still applies, this article points out the factors that bend it somewhat. I wonder about the compositional effects of diet on the way ingested calories are used, too: studies have shown that isocaloric high-protein diets result in increased lean/muscle mass and lower fat mass, compared to high-carb ones. It would be nice to have a survey article to read on recent studies in this area, if anyone would be so kind.

I liked this factoid in the article: "Back when it was the craze to measure such variety European scientists discovered that Russian intestines are about five feet longer than those of, say, Italians." Useful adaptation there (I wonder if it tends to make Russian guts any bigger?)

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

Here's the core problem. At a fundamental level the thermodynamic argument with regard to body weight has to work, of course it does, there's no way to slip past the laws of physics. If you eat little enough and exercise enough you will lose weight, period, full stop.

But by the same token, it's a useless fact, utterly.

Look at the same argument as applied to finances. If you make more money than you spend you will build up savings until eventually you are rich.

The issue is that these are trivial facts. They don't tackle the core difficulties of the problem they are just bland tautologies. Ultimately long-term weight loss is a complex matter of psychology, motivation, habits, and indeed personal temperament and genetic baggage. For some folks it will come naturally and easily, for others it will always be an uphill climb, and for others it will be almost impossible. And the same thing is true with regards to being wealthy. Some folks quickly and intuitively acquire the skills to step into a business, tweak the knobs until its profitable and then start building up their personal finances from those profits until they have a desire to move on to something else where they do the same thing, continuing to get richer and richer over time. Whereas for others it can be much more of a struggle, or maybe even effectively impossible because they don't have the same opportunities.

aneth43• 14 years ago

> Here's the core problem. At a fundamental level the thermodynamic argument with regard to body weight has to work, of course it does, there's no way to slip past the laws of physics. If you eat little enough and exercise enough you will lose weight, period, full stop.

This is just not true. Our bodies follow the laws of thermodynamics, but the laws of thermodynamics do not dictate how or whether we process calories. We can poop out fat. If you drink a bottle of olive oil, you will probably not digest it all. If you eat fiber, you won't process those calories. Our bodies are not bunsen burners.

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

> "Ultimately long-term weight loss is a complex matter of psychology, motivation, habits, and indeed personal temperament and genetic baggage."

As someone who has suffered and struggled with obesity in the past, I hear ya loud and clear, but IMO the notion that "calories in < calories out -> weight gain" is still very valuable.

One of the fundamental problems that lies between our society and healthy weight is that we continue to believe in miracle diets, or that somehow we can cheat the rule. We talk about being carb-free, being fat-free, rarely acknowledging that maybe we should just stop eating so damned much.

When I was in high school I was quite obese, and the (Canadian) government paid to send me to a dietician in a group program. Let me tell ya, the notion that "calories in must be less than calories out" was news to a lot of people there.

You're right of course - this knowledge, in an of itself, is insufficient force to turn a fat man into a thin man, but in the current state of our society, simply acknowledging and owning up to this fact is pretty tremendous.

gxs3• 14 years ago

If this is at all interesting to you, I highly recommend Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat and What to Do About it (http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702)

which is a more accessible version of his more rigorous book Good Calories, Bad calories.

I've been on a bit of a health binge since the beginning of the year and have been doing lots of research into these things. In a nutshell, not all calories are the same the some can wreak havoc on your system (grains, it turns out, aren't that good for us). The Paleo Solution, by Robb Wolf, is another great book - he goes to great lengths to discuss the science and biochemistry behind the points he is making. Highly recommend.

heretohelp15• 14 years ago

Taubes isn't taken seriously by most dieticians and nutrition researchers we talk to (I work at a nutrition startup).

I'd say that if there is any value to Taubes, it is this:

Different foods, given the same calories, will fill you up or nourish you at varying degrees.

300 calories of oreo cookies isn't the same as eating a banana and some chicken.

The main practical benefit people get from low carb, paleo, etc is that they're eating less sugar and junk, and thus eating healthy food with better overall satiety. As a result, they lose weight because they're eating fewer calories.

You can lose weight eating twinkies, it's just hard to do because it's bad for your health, not nutritious, and leaves you feeling hungry because it's all carbs.

A more scientific and less paleo-obsessed way to think about carbohydrates is this:

Carbs are fuel, if you're an athlete, you have a use for them. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, excess fuel isn't going to do you any favors.

Adjust accordingly.

In the end: calories in, calories out. Humanity hasn't defeated the laws of thermodynamics. It's just a question of how easy and healthy it is to maintain a sub-maintenance caloric intake.

Edit:

Okay people, I just got done saying low carb made sense if you weren't an athlete, what exactly are you arguing against? I agree with you guys, I just think the reasoning and rationale should be taken in the context of current nutrition research and not some demagogue's book that is obsessed with a dietary aesthetic rather than data.

enraged_camel5• 14 years ago

>>Taubes isn't taken seriously by most dieticians and nutrition researchers we talk to (I work at a nutrition startup).

That's because most dietitians and nutrition researchers follow conventional wisdom, which was established back in the 50s and 60s. Taubes himself included an amazing commentary on how conventional wisdom is incredibly difficult to dislodge in medicine and related fields. He had no illusions about his book being enough to do it, especially since he's a science writer rather than a scientist.

But his work is very valuable, and his dissection of why we believe what we believe is spot on. He goes a little overboard in blaming carbs, but does an excellent job vindicating fats.

cakeface• 14 years ago

  In the end: calories in, calories out. Humanity hasn't defeated the laws of thermodynamics.

I think is a simplistic and problematic view of it. We are complicated machines. We can't process all types of input efficiently and without side effects. Any type of machine works differently depending on the source of energy. I can't put diesel fuel in my car and expect it to run the same way that it does on gas. Diesel fuel has energy just like gas but there is more to it than that.

rayiner• 14 years ago

> In the end: calories in, calories out. Humanity hasn't defeated the laws of thermodynamics. It's just a question of how easy and healthy it is to maintain a sub-maintenance caloric intake.

It is all about "calories in, calories out" but what on earth makes you assume that the human digestive system approximates the behavior of a bomb calorimeter? The whole article is about how the body extracts different amounts of the potentially available calories in food, and uses different amounts of energy to extract those calories.

stdbrouw• 14 years ago

> Humanity hasn't defeated the laws of thermodynamics.

But that doesn't mean what you think it means. Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

calories in, calories out

After a lifetime of fighting with my weight, including surgery to give me a fight change, I have to say that statement is the single most useless statement in a segment filled with misinformation. It is used by people who haven't struggled to (perhaps not intentionally) insult people who do. "Gee, can't you count. It's just a calorie."

The problem with that statement is it assumes our bodies are like a gasoline engine, where, yes, a calorie in is a calorie out. Our bodies are not like that. Instead, we take in many different kinds of fuels. Everybody's body is different in how it processes each of those kinds of fuels. More importantly, everybody's brain is different in how it reacts to inputs coming from the gas tank and engine.

Until you understand how the various fuels interact with your body, a calorie is a calorie is completely meaningless.

Carbs are fuel, if you're an athlete, you have a use for them.

Yes, yes, yes. I completely agree with this. The brain needs some carbohydrates to run. The body can, if absolutely necessary, convert other foods into carbs to make that happen.

The things paleo and the various low-carb diets do is give a structure around how to reduce those carbs, especially in a culture that worships the ultra-refined, processed-thrice, almost-straight-sugar carbohydrate.

reneherse• 14 years ago

Downvoted for opening with a (double) argument from authority.

For your "more scientific" view, you offer assertions without citing any supporting evidence. So, as is, your statement is an opinion, as is so much nutritional advice.

Hope your startup is based on more logic and less conventional wisdom than shown here.

joelrunyon3• 14 years ago

>In the end: calories in, calories out.

If you're just talking about "weight loss" then yea, that's right, but you don't address body composition at all here.

If you just wanted to "lose weight", then you could chop off an arm and BOOM, you just lost weight. What MOST people want to do is to burn and lose fat, NOT weight - they just express it differently.

If it was just calories in vs calories out, I could drink 3000 calories of vodka a day and still be okay as long as I burned off 3100 calories, and we all know that's not the case.

joelrunyon3• 14 years ago

Not to mention, counting calories is just painful. Have you ever really tried to do this? Frankly, it just sucks.

Has any other culture in history EVER counted calories? I'm betting "no" considering the calorie is a relatively new concept (1842). And yes, somehow they managed not to have the obesity problems we have today.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie

wonnage2• 14 years ago

What part of the laws of thermodynamics imply calories in -> calories out? This belies a total ignorance of their actual meaning. The first law of thermodynamics would be satisfied in any of the following scenarios:

1. Your stomach explodes, releasing the caloric content of the food as heat over a brief duration

2. Your digestive tract decides to stop digesting, and passes the food through unmodified

3. Normal digestion

As you can see, conservation of energy is completely meaningless in the context of diet.

The second law of thermodynamics concerns itself with efficiency of processes. To apply it usefully, we'd take into consideration the different metabolic pathways of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. We know for a fact that the pathway for sugars is thermodynamically more efficient than proteins [1] - the laws of thermodynamics directly contradict "a calorie is a calorie"! Not to mention the fact that consumed protein is metabolized and stored differently than consumed sugars, which are in turn different from fats.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/#__sec4ti...

Homunculiheaded• 14 years ago

The reason people are arguing against you is that even in 2012 on HN in the face of currently incompletely understood complexity people instantly start forming micro-religions complete with prophets and various 'higher-powers', and of course heretics and infidels.

I mean seriously this article pretty much says "wow, this stuff is complex and really hard to make sense of", and the top comment is "but I have found the truth in this book!"

I fully agree with you, I think the paleo approach has some pretty sound ideas. But when I hear people talk about how "evolution" commands we shall eat no grains I get really worried about how quickly educated people can turn science into magic.

netcan• 14 years ago

There is definitely a scientifically provable correlation between caloric intake and weight gain. It's somewhat causal in that if you suppress calories weight gain (growth) is reduced.

The tricky part is that causality runs both ways. When a child grows, they take in a caloric surplus. If you surpress caloric intake, the growth will be suppressed. It's the same for plants too. Block the sun & they will grow slower.

So (according to good/bad calorie theories) it's not that calorie accounting is incorrect. Take in fewer calories and you'll lose weight. It's that it misses the point. The correct question is why is your body growing (and pursuing the calories necessary to fuel it).

*My own pet theory is that foods aren't inherently bad or unnatural for us to eat. We're just wired to build different bodies depending on available food sources. Mono-croppers need to survive bad harvests & hungry winters. Sugary fruits usually aren't available for very long, it might be good to build up a reserve while they are.

brady747• 14 years ago

It's ok, Taubes doesn't take most dietitian and nutrition researchers seriously either :) (thankfully, imo). -demagogue

Johngibb2• 14 years ago

I'm philosophically opposed to the phrase "calories in, calories out". True, we can't violate thermodynamics. However, the real important thing is calories absorbed, and how those calories affect metabolism, calories out.

Not as poetic, but you said it yourself - 300 calories of oreos are not equal to the same calories of chicken. And wood sure has a lot of calories (right?) but chew it up and eat it and you're not gonna get many of them absorbed. And some food triggers more of an insulin response which affects what your body does with the calories. It conveys the wrong point to the person who doesn't learn more to say "calories in, calories out" even though at some level of course it's thermodynamically sound.

greggman2• 14 years ago

Calories are a measure of heat. Not Energy. You measure calories buy burning the food in question and measuring how hot it raises the temperature of a given amount of water.

Magnesium burns a lot hotter than corn therefore it has far more calories than corn yet eating a pound of magnesium a day is not going to make you as fat as a pound of corn a day.

So please stop with the "calories in, calories out" simplification.

bad_user• 14 years ago

     Taubes isn't taken seriously by most dieticians and 
     nutrition researchers we talk to

That's an appeal to authority that dismisses the many studies given as reference in the Taubes book, studies which have results that are contrary to popular wisdom.

One of those studies involved a comparison between a group of people that were placed on a low-carb diet and the weight loss was more efficient than in the other group placed on a high-carb diet that ate less calories.

Of course, when it comes to nutrition, most studies are flawed because you can't do double-blind studies and because controlling the variables involved is hard. However, that's one reason why I go by my gut feeling and completely ignore "most dieticians and nutrition researchers", at least for now.

And I'm doing that because those same dieticians and nutrition researchers have recommended and are still recommending high-carb diets, with complete disregard to the health issues associated with consuming a diet rich in sugar, starch and deficient in proteins, fats and certain vitamins (the fact that we are omnivores that need a balanced diet should have rang a bell, but no).

sasoon• 14 years ago

> Humanity hasn't defeated the laws of thermodynamics.

Human body does not extract 100% of energy from food, and waste that comes out is not calorie free. So it is not simple 'calories in, calories out'

nerdbites• 14 years ago

What's the startup? Do you have a URL? Thanks.

jeremyw• 14 years ago

Also, Zooko and Amber Wilcox-O'Hearn are reviewing the science related to ketosis and diet here:

http://www.ketotic.org/

malbs• 14 years ago

Another book recommendation:-

Girth Control: The Science of Fat Loss & Muscle Gain - Alan Aragon

This is the bible, it has absolutely no fluff/filler content.

js2• 14 years ago

I've read GCBC and initially found it quite persuasive. But it seems that Taubes isn't really correct. The best refutation I've seen is from obesity researcher Stephan Guyenet.

From http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...

I hope you can see by now that the carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity is not only incorrect on a number of levels, but it may even be backward. The reason why obesity and metabolism researchers tend not to take this idea seriously is that it is contradicted by a large body of evidence from multiple fields. I understand that people like ideas that "challenge conventional wisdom", but the fact is that obesity is a complex state and it will not be shoehorned into simplistic hypotheses.

Carbohydrate consumption per se is not behind the obesity epidemic. However, once overweight or obesity is established, carbohydrate restriction can aid fat loss in some people. The mechanism by which this occurs is not totally clear, but there is no evidence that insulin plays a causal role in this process. Carbohydrate restriction spontaneously reduces calorie intake (as does fat restriction), suggesting the possibility that it alters body fat homeostasis, but this alteration likely occurs in the brain, not in the fat tissue itself. The brain is the primary homeostatic regulator of fat mass, just as it homeostatically regulates blood pressure, breathing rate, and body temperature. This has been suspected since the early brain lesion studies of the 1940s (47) and even before, and the discovery of leptin in 1994 cemented leptin's role as the main player in body fat homeostasis. In some cases, the setpoint around which the body defends these variables can be changed (e.g., hypertension, fever, and obesity). Research is ongoing to understand how this process works.

fhoxh• 14 years ago

Many obesity researchers find Guyenet to be quite the joke.

For example, Peter over at HyperLipid recently ripped him to utter shreds:

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/06/confused.html

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/06/insulin-un-de...

Not to mention, Taubes countered Guyenet with a 6-part series refuting Guyenet's widely mocked food-reward/palatability hypothesis:

http://garytaubes.com/2011/09/catching-up-on-lost-time-ances...

The thing is, there's a lot of infighting; These guys are always going back and forth. They both have their camps. Those both have their arsenal of studies. It's almost a sport...

The simple fact of the matter is that we're not really going to actually know conclusively and incontrovertibly one way or the other for at least another decade.

cliftonk• 14 years ago

I'd just like to say that my athletic performance, body composition and mental clarity have been far, far better on paleo than any other diet. I'd also recommend the two books gxs mentioned.

Of course, not all digestive systems are created equal and YMMV. For instance, wasn't until after eating paleo for a while I discovered I had a mild gluten and dairy intolerance (most people develop the latter).

mberning10• 14 years ago

It's crazy to me that 'counting calories' is something people routinely take for granted. It is a uniquely human trait. No other animal in this world has a need to do this. Humans up until a hundred years ago (or so) had no need to do it. What the hell has happened?

My opinion - food processing and the agricultural revolution. A metabolic derangement caused by overly processed agricultural products.

FrojoS• 14 years ago

> No other animal in this world has a need to do this.

Have you never seen an obese dog or cat? Feeding to much of the wrong food will make any animal fat.

mberning10• 14 years ago

Sure, I've seen an obese dog or cat, and I've also seen what these animals are fed.

I guess my point was not clear enough.

Feeding any animal an improper diet can lead to a metabolic problem where satiety and fat deposition do not work as intended.

Animals in the wild eating their natural diet do not have a need to limit their consumption. They self regulate effectively.

joeblubaugh2• 14 years ago

Exactly. Most animals exist in a world of scarcity, near starvation for significant periods - often every year. Mammals that live in conditions of abundance usually get fat. We've evolved to do that and hedge against scarcity.

dualogy• 14 years ago

I suppose what was implied here was "undomesticated animal out in the wild and not held in captivity".

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

What about Occam's Razor?

> "Humans up until a hundred years ago (or so) had a need to do it."

Actually, the aristocracy and nobility have all suffered from obesity since ancient times. Historical texts have many, many records of... robustly sized... monarchs, nobles, and the rich. Indeed, the image of the rich fat-cat is a lot older than merely the last century.

> "My opinion - food processing and the agricultural revolution. A metabolic derangement caused by overly processed agricultural products."

Or perhaps more simply, the majority of the population stopped doing hard physical labor day in day out. We started sitting behind desks for 8 hours a day instead of toiling in a field or factory for 12.

I'm also willing to believe that we are simply eating more than we used to. In industrialized nations the ratio of food cost to income is almost laughably low - compared to agrarian nations where the cost of food can sometimes be up to half of a family's income. If you look at countries with smaller average serving sizes you will see a corresponding drop in obesity rates.

Thankfully I think the country is starting to come around to the notion that no amount of sodium reduction, fat-reduction, or carb-reduction will work if you continue to shovel it into your mouth by the gobful.

It's become vogue to blame every ill of society on industrialization, when instead the answer seems to be simpler and more obvious.

mberning10• 14 years ago

My point was that it was not a pandemic level problem up until recently. Of course rich people with access to an abundance of highly palatable foods can become fat. Those aristocrats of old are suffering the same thing many people suffer today.

Edit: I suppose people don't see the connection between over consumption, availability, palatability, and processing.

natrius3• 14 years ago

"Thankfully I think the country is starting to come around to the notion that no amount of sodium reduction, fat-reduction, or carb-reduction will work if you continue to shovel it into your mouth by the gobful."

The things I usually want to shovel in my mouth are carbohydrates, and insulin spikes explain at least part of that. I eat far less when I'm trying to keep my insulin low.

Everyone knows you have to eat less to lose weight. The question is how. Some techniques are more successful than others.

jagira• 14 years ago

Seems like human beings have stopped moving their feet :-)

mberning10• 14 years ago

This may be of interest to you

http://news.yale.edu/2012/08/02/hunter-gatherers-expend-same...

People researching modern hunter gatherer societies are finding that they expend roughly the same amount of calories as westerners.

001sky2• 14 years ago

One case to consider, in the modern era, might be performance. Like NASA expeditions, mountaineering, long-distance hiking. Anytime you need to carry the weight of your food (for 5+ days), under strenuous exercise. Calorie counting, weight/volume measurement, and nutrition labeling become essential.

Devilboy• 14 years ago

Our diets changed. If we revert to eating what humans ate 100,000 years ago we do NOT need to count calories and we do not get fat. What happened is we started cooking and eating things that could not be eaten raw, like grains, potatoes and so on. If you eat only stuff that can be eaten raw your body will do a pretty good job of maintaining your ideal weight without counting calories (assuming you don't have a thyroid problem or something of course)

lwat3• 14 years ago

We got the 'food pyramid' which told everyone that eating loads of carbs is good for you and eating fat in any form is bad. It's gonna take decades to reverse this mistake.

vacri3• 14 years ago

We will also end up being a lot shorter by eating the diet of ages past, which suggests that that is not the optimal diet either.

awj4• 14 years ago

> My opinion - food processing and the agricultural revolution. A metabolic derangement caused by overly processed agricultural products.

It's simpler than that: dense food and lack of exercise. More people have access to more calories than at any other time in history. At the same time, we spend more time at work and at play sitting and expending minimal energy than at any other time in history.

simonbrown• 14 years ago

The article mentions that the potatoes and beef were organic (I assume as in organic food):

> Carmody fed adult, male mice organic sweet potatoes

What is the significance of this?

unreal373• 14 years ago

I would assume the molecular makeup of food is modified by what you use to grow it. An organic potato might be smaller and more nutrient-dense than a chemically-grown one.

cracell• 14 years ago

I'd assume making them organic helps to control for a pesticide or herbicide in them that could be changing the result. Not the best control but better than nothing.

Aloisius• 14 years ago

If this is true, it makes counting calories incredibly hard for anyone who has a varied diet.

If each ingredient in the food you eat is digested at a different efficiency depending on the bacteria in your gut and other specifics of your digestive system and the food itself varies by upwards of 20% because of natural variation and how much you cook it, then it seems it would be downright impossible.

I've tried in the past and given up (I would gain weight on a 1200 calorie diet of processed diet food). I finally just went to an extreme nearly vegan diet where I get over 90% of my calories from plants and exclude grains, oil, sugar and salt. It makes it virtually impossible to overeat even if I have to eat 4x the mass of food other people.

001sky2• 14 years ago

It would be very interesting to see an entropy factor for common foods, and in particukar things that don't digest (nuts, etc). Like a reference table.

engtech• 14 years ago

I too have used that approach, and the only problem I've found is because I'm still used to taking in a large mass of low calorie raw foods, if I'm in a situation where the type of food I'd normally eat isn't available, then I have the capacity to really pig out.

raghavmohan• 14 years ago

Unrelated to the topic, but all the "X is not a X" subtopics remind of this interesting paper I read not too long ago titled "A File is Not a File: Understanding the I/O Behavior of Apple Desktop Applications"(http://research.cs.wisc.edu/wind/Publications/ibench-sosp11....)

grecy• 14 years ago

>nine calories per gram

<imperial unit> per <metric unit>.

Must be an American article.

dredmorbius4• 14 years ago

ORLY?

calorie: the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram (sometimes, one gram) of water one degree centigrade.

vacri3• 14 years ago

It's not an imperial unit, but it's not an SI unit either. One glaring example of it's inappropriateness is that the 'calorie' varies depending on what you're measuring (as you say, sometimes a gram, sometimes a kilogram). The SI unit is the joule.

MSM• 14 years ago

It took you that long into an article on 'Scientific American' to realize it was an American article?

UnFleshedOne2• 14 years ago

Nah, mixing imperial and metric is a canadian thing. They even do it in aviation, which I find insane...

itmag• 14 years ago

Has anyone here tried Seth Roberts' Shangri-La Diet?

natrius3• 14 years ago

Tried it. The main side effect is how silly people will think you are when you explain it. You do end up eating less, but I think a lot of the responsibility goes to the flavor-free periods you need in the day.

lwat3• 14 years ago

Everyone is an expert on diet.

Dove• 14 years ago

I think that's more academically interesting than it is practically useful. Some of the foods I eat may have calorie counts that are off by 20 or 30 percent? That's noise.

Being on an 1100 diet that you think is 1400 (or vice versa) doesn't matter that much. What matters is that it isn't 3500--something that can easily happen by accident if you don't pay attention.

niels_olson2• 14 years ago

If you want to experiment with your own dietary in-out behavior, I recommend you institute a change for 3 months and then plot the diff using this

http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/

It mathematically modelled from data of many large, longitudinal studies (Nurses' Health, Framingham, etc).

As a physician who reduced caloric intake in January, I've found the bwsimulator to be very predictive and informative on how I can modify things further in the future. But you really do need a couple of data points on yourself to plug in first.

charlieok• 14 years ago

What would help me is if it were easy to track this stuff.

When I get the receipt at a restaurant, why isn't there a nutrition label printed on it, like the ones in grocery stores? Why aren't there QR encodings of nutrition labels for easy scanning by your choice of tracking app?

I see opportunity for improvement here :)

dhughes• 14 years ago

All any fad diet boils down to is "how can I eat like a pig, not exercise and stay thin?" and sell books about the diet.

emmelaich• 14 years ago

For me, I'm mostly convinced of the paleo view. It's by no means the only valid view or the whole view but I'm convinced by numerous anecdotes from people I know personally and elsewhere.

Here's one quote from Anna Karenina which suggests that a similar approach was well known in Tolstoy's time:

    On the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky had come
    earlier than usual to eat beefsteak in the common messroom
    of the regiment.  He had no need to be strict with himself,
    as he had very quickly been brought down to the required
    light weight; but still he had to avoid gaining flesh, and
    so he eschewed farinaceous and sweet dishes

The Hidden Truths about Calories

Related Stories