
Death of the Calorie - cyanbane
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie
======
ordinaryperson
To summarize some of the major points:

1\. Calorie counts on labels undercount by up to 18%

2\. Other factors to weight than pure calories, including genetics

3\. Certain foods have low calorie counts but are worse than others with
higher counts

4\. Eating whole foods is better than non-whole foods and helped the subject
of this article lose weight better than calorie counting & exercise

Worshipping whole foods is not the answer, you need balance. Plus who wants to
live life like a Buddhist monk? Having a burger or pizza every once in a while
is fun, it's just about moderation.

I'm calorie counting right now via a food journal, trying to stay under 2K a
day (I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day), and I'm oddly enjoying
the experience.

One, I can't cheat myself. Before I'd get frustrated trying to lose weight and
failing, feeling like I tried really hard and "deserved" it. But with the
calorie count you know if you did or didn't. It's very easy to forget or not
realize how much you're eating exactly, that's why you write it down.

Also, I feel rewarded if I eat salads every day, like I'm getting points in a
game or something. Not everyone's brain works that way but for me calorie
counting makes dieting more scientific, at least somewhat.

Articles like these are somewhat unhelpful because yes it's great to eat whole
foods but so is 1) watching what you eat 2) relying on moderation and 3)
exercising.

P.S. Didn't like how the article implicitly denigrates running as a weight
loss tool just because this one person didn't succeed doing it -- not exactly
a rigorous analysis.

~~~
lukifer
Moderation is great if it works for you; personally, I’ve found it easier to
give something up entirely than to moderate. If I don’t eat sugar for a couple
weeks, I don’t miss it, and it takes no effort to stay off it; if I have
something sweet, the cravings come back with ferocity.

~~~
ordinaryperson
And that will work better for some people. For me I try to manage my
addictions instead of going cold turkey. But if that works for you, more power
to you my friend.

------
kaiju0
In this case perfect is the enemy of good. The calorie is not perfect but I
don't think there is a perfect measure. Is it good enough for a diet? Yep.

Make a diet plan. Eat for two weeks. Record result. If you are losing 2 lb a
week good. If not adjust percentages. You will be hungry. The end.

~~~
wcarron
Disclaimer: opinions incoming.

2lb a week is very aggressive in the long run. That's a 1000 kCal deficit per
day.

While it may work for some it's not generally regarded as a sustainable target
deficit. It may work for a few weeks, but then it can't be maintained and
weight rebounds. There are other side effects like constant tiredness, hunger,
irritability, trouble sleeping, etc. that easily throw weight loss off the
rails.

Again, might work for some people; but 1 Lb or 0.5kg per week is what I
typically see recommended.

~~~
EpicEng
That's true for people who are only slightly overweight. If you're obese or
close to it 2lb / week is easy because the amount you have to eat just to
maintain your current weight is ludicrous.

------
babyslothzoo
Quite a headline, I was hoping for some revolutionary new model or adjustment
to physics and the known laws of thermodynamics but instead I found the same
tired arguments of denialism and ignorance about dietary guidelines and why
people are fat to begin with (hint: fat is stored excess energy, that excess
energy enters the body through the mouth).

> Most government guidelines indicated that, as a man, he needed 2,500
> calories a day to maintain his weight (the target for women is 2,000)

Those guidelines alone are a recipe for rampant morbid obesity, and most
people eat far more than that as evidenced by the rapidly expanding obesity
rate. The majority of people are simply far too sedentary to recommend
anywhere near that level of caloric intake, given the levels of obesity they
could easily cut those guidelines by a third if not in half. Or even less if
they wanted to promote cures to obesity related disease like type-2 diabetes.

By the way, eating about 800 calories a day will cause weight loss (not
surprising, laws of physics still apply) and reverse type-2 diabetes.

[https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-...](https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-diabetes-
can-be-reversed-with-a-low-calorie-diet)

Oh well, let the science denial continue. Whether it is weight and obesity,
evolution, climate, pollution, biological sex, evolution, flat earth,
creationism, in the modern era facts no longer matter.

------
work_is_play
Bullshit. Yeah, calorie counts on packaging is imprecise. Yes it's difficult
to know for sure. Yes there are a lot of small factors that go into it.

You know what you do with fuzzy measurements and personal bias? You over-count
calories and round up deliberately to off-set it. You know what you say when
someone tells you that your micronutrient balance isn't just right? "Probably.
But obesity will kill me before that will."

Source: one drunk guy who has lost >100 pounds and kept it off for 3 years.

------
l0b0
Here's a fact which blew my mind when looking for a healthy cereal: most _ice
creams_ have fewer calories per weight than even the low-calorie cereals.
Right now comparing Weetbix (97% wheat, considered basically health food by
lots of people) to a pack of RJ's licorice (37% sugar, definitely tip of the
nutrition pyramid), the Weetbix is listed as containing _more_ energy by
weight. That at least intuitively seems completely broken.

~~~
crooked-v
What about when comparing by volume rather than weight, though? Most cereal is
pretty low-density.

------
man-and-laptop
The advantage of calorie-counting is that it's quite easy - especially when
you use something like My Fitness Pal. That doesn't mean it's correct, of
course.

What alternative is this article advocating?

~~~
citeguised
I guess lots of people do the mistake of having a too-small daily deficit
while counting.

It's obviously not an exact science.

If you go with a daily reduction of 1000 kcal, then it doesn't matter if you
have an error-margin of 300-500 kcal, you still lose weight.

If you only try to save 500 a day, and maybe are not too exact in your
logging, you might not see an effect at all.

------
aidenn0
It sounds like the person described in the article consumed a _lot_ of
calories from sugary drinks (gatorade and fruit juice are both mentioned).

Considering that sugary drinks tend to have very low effects on satiety, it's
not surprising he was hungry all the time.

Many of the effective non-calorie-counting diets have turned out to just be
good ways to reduce calorie intake.

------
SketchySeaBeast
> Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University in Boston, has found that
> labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an
> average of 18%. American government regulations allow such labels to
> understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure that consumers are not short-
> changed in terms of how much nutrition they receive). The information on
> some processed frozen foods misstates their calorific content by as much as
> 70%.

I've found the problem is that they'll also vastly underestimate the size of a
serving or a product. Things will be much larger than the nutritional
information would suggest. A food scale is a must.

------
KozmoNau7
I recently watched the documentary "Cooked" on Netflix. In it, Michael Pollan
makes some interesting observations about "real food" vs "industrial food",
and the benefits of long cooking times, sourdough bread vs. yeast bread and so
on. It echoes many of the same observations as this article.

That's not to say that he's 100% right about everything, but I think there is
a very good point to be made that we ought to eat more home-cooked food,
instead of fast food and processed food products optimized for production
costs and shelf life.

~~~
atomical
Bread is a processed food and sourdough seems pretty trendy right now.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I very specifically wrote "processed food products _optimized for production
costs and shelf life_ ".

------
kbouck
Long article, but main points that I got:

\- That fat creation is influenced more by how fast sugar enters the system
(and the insulin response that follows) than caloric content.

\- Simple carbs (white bread, pasta) are quickly broken down into sugar

\- The rate at which sugar enters system (glycemic index) triggers a
proportional insulin spike

\- Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat

\- Counting calories without also considering more influential factors like
glycemic index of foods plays a major role in failing of weight-loss
initiatives.

\- Exercise is healthy, but diet plays a larger factor in body weight: ~75%
for most people.

~~~
allover
> Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat

This is the key, and completely unproven point as far as I know.

This is called the 'insulin hypothesis'.

And there's still ZERO evidence for it.

So as far as we know right now, it's all down to calories <shrug>.

~~~
pacala
I’ve moved to a diet mostly based on unlimited fresh fruits and veggies, plus
limited cheese and meat. Three months and twenty pounds later, I can tell with
some degree of confidence that it is quite difficult to load up on calories
from apples, bananas, oranges, lettuce or snap peas. While the insulin
hypothesis may be wrong, there is so much food one ingests in a 24 hours
period, and if this food is low on calories the grand total will be on the low
side.

------
xkcd-sucks
Makes sense, a log of wood is several megacalories but you'll starve eating it

~~~
dtech
Calories on food packaging have for decades been a calculation of absorbable
nutrients. Your log would have a very low calorie count if it lay in stores.

~~~
rwmj
The article (which I have read) argues the opposite - that calorie counts on
packaging are in fact rather unrelated to the availability of energy in the
food. Most are calculated using an 100+ year outdated and never reproduced
study of basic food groups which used a calorimeter (that burns the food).
Your log would therefore have a pretty high calorie count.

~~~
dtech
This is incorrect. An bomb calorometer is almost never used in the US
nowadays, and not allowed in the EU. A 1990 NLEA law [1] [2] requires calorie
contents to be based on nutritional components.

The article of this post does not explicitly state that a bomb calorometer is
still in use, but it is very implied. I do not really like to article because
it omissions and framing like this to support its narrative.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Educati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Education_Act_of_1990)

[2] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-
manuf...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-
manufacturers/)

~~~
m0rose
Since we're being blunt: This is misleading.

We don't use the bomb calorimeter today, but we still use the Atwater system
(with a quick tweak for fiber) for those "nutritional components." All that
means is instead of burning the food ourselves we're looking at a table that
the guy who burned the foods created... with his bomb calorimeter.[1] The only
reason we're marginally better now is because we're starting to take into
account digestibility (e.g. Carbs have non-digestible fiber subtracted before
the calories are calculated).[2]

[1][https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-
manuf...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-
manufacturers/)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system#Modified_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system#Modified_system)

~~~
dtech
So you're repeating the exact point I was making. A bomb calorimeter is not
used anymore today. Altough it is very interesting that the 4 kcal/g protein
etc values are still used based on that research, I thought the values had
been better determined nowadays. At least progress is possible and being made.

But still, what the gp says was that a wooden log would have a food label with
a high calorie content. That is not correct.

~~~
nkurz
_But still, what the gp says was that a wooden log would have a food label
with a high calorie content. That is not correct._

Was the original comment edited? As it reads now, the GP makes no mention of a
label, only the factually correct statement that a log "is several
megacalories" (ie, hardwood releases about 20 kCal/g when burned) but "you'll
starve eating it" (ie, human digestion is not able to make use of this
energy).

You are right that a current nutritional label would not show the log has
having any significant number of calories, but the GP's actual post never said
that it would. What makes you visualize this non-existent food label and then
claim it is incorrect, as opposed to accepting their statement as written?

~~~
dtech
The article is about how "the calorie is dead" (title), in the context of
human consumption. The GP says "makes sense, a log of wood is several
megacalories but you'll starve eating it". My point is that a log would have a
food label with very little calories, not several megacalories. It does not
"make sense" to use as support for "the calorie is dead".

------
cuspycode
The first paragraph of the article mentions that Camacho was traumatized by a
kidnapping that involved torture and a mock execution. That made him a victim
of PTSD that made him put on weight. It's not clear how relevant this is to
the rest of the story, but to an amateur like me it seems obvious that
treating the PTSD directly would be a better approach than solving the problem
by counting calories. Of course it's still trivially true that calorie balance
completely determines weight stability, so it would be stupid to dismiss
calorie counting if you have trouble with keeping your weight stable, whether
it's too high or too low.

------
11235813213455
A key is to eat fruit/vegetables, with no limit, with their fibers and flesh.
They act like a sponge in the digestive system, releasing nutrients very
slowly and uniformly

Also, get used to fasting (18 hours and more), that's actually very
regenerative for the body

------
krupan
Behold, The Hacker's Diet:

[http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/](http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/)

Written sometime back in the 1990's, the author (creator of Autocad)
determined that weight gain and loss is simply a feedback and control problem.
Most of us eat open loop. By counting calories in and calculating your weight
trend[1], and adjusting calorie intake accordingly you can deliberately
control your weight. Simple, right? :-)

Iv'e tried it. It actually does work. Mostly. The cool thing about it is you
don't even have to count every calorie you eat. Just eat normal and start the
weight trend measurements. After a while you'll see what your trend is and his
online tools will calculate how many calories of intake you should reduce (or
increase) to give you your desired rate of weight loss (or gain). Finding a
way to cut 200 calories a day, for example, is easier than counting every
calorie.

The downside is, I think, what this article gets at. Twice I've focused hard
on using The Hacker's Diet and lost a good amount of weight, but as I dropped
I started to get really hungry and fatigued all the time. It was weird. At
first it felt _really_ good to weigh less, but it became very hard to
maintain. My best guess, and this article seems to support this, is that the
composition of my calorie intake wasn't optimal (or even close to it). Both
times I lost my will and gained the weight back.

It's interesting to note that he mentions in the book that he's "weird" in
that he eats all his calories for the day in one big meal in the middle of the
day. "You don't have to do this," he assures. And now, 30 years later, there
is a loud group of people who do exactly that in order to lose weight (see:
Intermittent Fasting). This article also mentions eating 3 meals with no
snacking in between is better than grazing all day.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that in case anyone is interested. I have no
easy answers. I'm not hugely overweight, the gains and losses I'm talking
about here are on the order of 20 to 30 lbs over the course of a few years
each time. Take all this as is.

1\. weigh yourself everyday, calculate an exponentially smoothed moving
average

------
coldtea
Related video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo)

------
pochamago
I just cannot take seriously anything that claims exercise and calorie
restriction are ever ineffective. It's literally always user error. The law of
thermodynamics dictates this, any other opinion is pseudoscience. It might be
difficult or impossible for the individual to stick to the plan, but if you
start off your article by claiming they did everything right and it still
didn't work, then I know the writer has no interest in facts.

~~~
avinium
I used to believe firmly in this too. Now, I'm a bit more open-minded, and I
don't believe it's as simple as the "law of thermodynamics".

True, noone can store more energy than you ingest.

But - as the article says - it's very difficult to know exactly how much
you're ingesting. The calorimeter is a very blunt way of determining how much
energy is "in" food - not only do food labels probably routinely understate
how much energy something contains, it has no way of explaining how that
energy is actually digested or metabolized by the human body.

Many people calculate their diet based on very slim (~500 kcal) margins. It's
conceivable that these are obliterated by these small fluctuations in actual
vs labelled calorific content.

That's without getting into issues like insulin sensitivity and so on.

My go-to recommendation for people trying to lose weight is eliminate all
sugar and simple/starchy carbohydrates and start a fairly light exercise
program. This will have a marked impact on appetite, and most people will
naturally start losing weight. If weight loss stalls, start playing around
with meal portions and feeding windows.

So far, I haven't heard of anyone who hasn't lose weight with this routine.

~~~
babyslothzoo
> I used to believe firmly in this too. Now, I'm a bit more open-minded, and I
> don't believe it's as simple as the "law of thermodynamics".

The wonderful thing about physics and science is that it does not matter what
you believe, fact is fact :)

~~~
EpicEng
GP didn't say that the science isn't true, only that it can be difficult for
the average person to use as a measuring stick.

