
‘Fed Up’ Asks, Are All Calories Equal? (2014) - miles
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/fed-up-asks-are-all-calories-equal/
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miles
In an HN discussion thread yesterday[1], there were some who argued that all
calories are equal insofar as obesity, diabetes, etc is concerned.

That idea has been largely discredited, as the NYT article on "Fed Up"
explains. Here's a snippet:

 _At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor
of medicine and epidemiology whose research was cited by experts in the film,
said that the long-held idea that we get fat solely because we consume more
calories than we expend is based on outdated science._

 _He has studied the effects that different foods have on weight gain and said
that it is true that 100 calories of fat, protein and carbohydrates are the
same in a thermodynamic sense, in that they release the same amount of energy
when exposed to a Bunsen burner in a lab. But in a complex organism like a
human being, he said, these foods influence satiety, metabolic rate, brain
activity, blood sugar and the hormones that store fat in very different ways._

 _Studies also show that calories from different foods are not absorbed the
same. When people eat high-fiber foods like nuts and some vegetables, for
example, only about three-quarters of the calories they contain are absorbed.
The rest are excreted from the body unused. So the calories listed on their
labels are not what the body is actually getting._

 _“The implicit suggestion is that there are no bad calories, just bad people
eating too much,” Dr. Mozaffarian said. “But the evidence is very clear that
not all calories are created equal as far as weight gain and obesity. If
you’re focusing on calories, you can easily be misguided.”_

[1] Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658835)

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teslabox
Wall Street's inconvenient problem is that refined/deodorized/rancid vegetable
oils commonly used in manufactured foods are not appropriate for human
consumption. Before deodorization was figured out, these oils (soybean,
linseed, etc) were used to make paint for the preservation of wood.

