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Discover why the calorie count could be wrong |
To get slim we need to follow a
low calorie diet. To follow a low calorie diet we need to be able to
properly read food calories. At first glance, this should be an easy
task. On all packaging the total quantity of calories is shown, and
there are many calorie books that list the calorie content for many
foods. So we should not experience any problem at all.
The reality, unfortunately, is not so simple - actually, it is far more
complicated! We will see now why.
The first problem is that the calories reported on
labels are often imprecise. The reason behind that is related to
the fact that the actual measurement of total calorie content has not
been done on the food we bought but on a similar sample. The problem is
that there is a fluctuation from sample to sample. Sometimes the total
quantity of calories could be less but sometimes it could be more. We
could eat an item of food where the label says 100Kcal, while in reality
we are eating 120Kcal.
The actual process of measuring food calories in a proper laboratory is
quite expensive. For this reason many food |
companies
do not carry out real measurements, but they just use preformed tables
to get roughly the quantity of calories in their food. If for
example their food contains 100g of butter, 100g of eggs and finally
100g of white flour, they just get some tables and read how many
calories are contained in these foods, and then they add everything
together. The big problem with this method is that it is very imprecise.
The quantity of calories can vary dramatically from similar food that
has been produced in different parts of the country or in different
parts of the world. Therefore, this method can add
up to 10-40% error.
The third problem is that the food industry has to solve a big dilemma.
In order to sell food they have to make it tasty – otherwise no-one will
buy it. To make food tasty they need to load it with sugar and fat. But
people want tasty low calorie food. So one possible trick that they
could use is to load the food with fat and sugar and write on the label
the wrong quantity of calories, normally much lower. Once someone tried
to compare the actual quantity of calories with what was reported on the
labels. The outcome was quite shocking, with the real values of calories
measured being between 20% and 100% more than that stated on the
packaging.
So we eat something convinced that it contains 100Kcal, but in reality
it could contain anything from 120 to 200Kcal. |
Therefore, we should not be surprised if we do not
lose weight even if we think we genuinely are on a low calorie diet.
The final problem that we have to consider is that
the scientific method used to calculate the
calorie quantity is intrinsically wrong.
How do we measure the quantity of calories in food? The technique is
conceptually very easy. The food that must be analysed is first
dehydrated, which means that the water contained in the food is
completely removed. Once all water has been removed, the food is put
inside the chamber of a piece of equipment called a calorimetric bomb.
The food is then set on fire and the quantity of heat produced is
measured. From the quantity of heat released by the combustion of the
food analysed, we can determine the total quantity of calories.
The big problem with this method is that if we put in a piece of wood or
a piece of plastic it will give us a content in calories that is
actually quite high, but if we eat wood or plastic our body will not be
able to get a single calorie! Why is that?
The problem is that the calorimetric bomb use a process of burning that
is different from what our body uses.
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In principle we could say that the
calorimetric bomb is able to tell us the maximum quantity of calories a
food contains, but it is not able to tell us how many calories we will
really get when we eat a particular food.
Let us take an example to understand this simple concept. Suppose two
people go on a diet where the main food is potatoes, and both of them
get exactly the same quantity of calories. However, while one person can
cook potatoes the other one has to eat them raw. Do you think that at
the end of the experiment these two people will have the same weight?
The answer is surely no. Raw potatoes are very difficult to digest,
which means that if we eat raw potatoes containing 100Kcal, just a
fraction of those calories will be absorbed, while if we eat the same
quantity of potatoes but well cooked, nearly all the calories will be
absorbed.
The moral of the story is: to be burned, calories must be digested and
absorbed first. If our bodies are unable to digest and absorb calories,
they will not be burned or stored as fat. They will simply be excreted
with the faeces.
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Therefore, 100g of raw potatoes contains the
same quantity of calories as 100g of cooked potatoes but our bodies are
not able to absorb them.
While the human body sees raw potatoes as a different food from cooked
potatoes, the calorimetric bomb does not. 100g of raw potatoes produce
the same quantity of heat as 100g of cooked potatoes, so a calorimetric
bomb is not able to detect the difference between these two foods.
In conclusion, we could say not all calories are the same. Some calories
are easier to absorb, while others are impossible.
The process of cooking food has a dramatic effect on how calories
contained in food can be absorbed.
Normally calories contained in raw food are more difficult to absorb
compared to calories contained in the same food that has been properly
cooked.
Unfortunately the story is not finished yet. Calories can come from
carbohydrates, fat or proteins. It is well known that if we burn 1g of
fat we get 9Kcal, while if we burn 1g of |
carbohydrates or proteins we get 4Kcal. But
this happens in a calorimetric bomb. In our bodies, the situation is a
little bit different. For example, suppose we eat 10g of proteins, they
should supply 40Kcal. However, this may not necessarily be the case: if
the body decides to use those 10g not for burning but for building its
own proteins, actually the body will not get calories but it will burn
an equivalent amount of calories to build its own proteins. The process
of building proteins is quite expensive.
If we try to live exclusively on protein alone where no fat or
carbohydrates are supplied we can eat as much protein as we want, but in
a few weeks we will die of starvation!
Again, a calorimetric bomb is not able to show this problem. If we use
this equipment to burn 1 gram of proteins, it says there are 4Kcal, if
we burn 100g the equipment will say that there are 400Kcal, and if we
burn 1kg the result will be 4000Kcal. However, a man that requires
2000Kcal to survive will starve if he is forced to live on 1kg of
proteins (4000Kcal)!
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For all the reasons listed here we need to keep in consideration that
calories are a useful tool to plan our diet, but we need to be aware
that they are rather imprecise. Calories found in one food are different
from calories found in another food. And the method of preparation
complicates the situation further.
The IntenseDF diet understands all these mechanisms, and uses these
differences to make the diet a pleasant experience. The diet advocates
the technique of under-cooking food, because calories in under-cooked
food are less absorbable. It also advocates eating proteins just after
8pm, because during the night our bodies use proteins to build their own
proteins and not fat. And in particular it teaches people to learn to
observe how food affects them, so that they can easily see if they are
getting too many calories from food or not, regardless of the number
written on the label. |
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