The Hidden Truths About Calories

[La]

Fascinating blog post! Though it talks a lot about how complicated the whole process of "counting" calories is, the bottom line (IMO) is that the only evidence that you are actually consuming fewer calories than you are expending is when you see weight loss. Track your intake/output all you want, but understand that those systems are inherently flawed.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... -calories/

Summary:
1) A Food is Not a Food: "In general, it seems that the more processed foods are the more they actually give us the number of calories we see on the box, bag or other sort of label. This applies not just to cooking and pounding but also to industrial processing."

2) A Body is Not a Body: "Even if two people were to somehow eat the same sweet potato cooked the same way they would not get the same number of calories."

3) A Microbe is Not a Microbe: "...differences among individual humans in their symbionts do seem to make differences in how they digest food—individuals appear to differ in their metabolism depending on just which microbes they have."

4) A Calorie is Not a Calorie: "...we would do well to eat fewer processed foods and more raw ones. This is not a novel insight (Such foods, after all, tend to have more nutrients such as B vitamins, phytonutrients and minerals and so are good for reasons having nothing to do with counting calories). But what might be novel is the realization that in eating such foods you could lose weight while keeping the precise tally of the calories you consume exactly the same."