Calorie question

[onthebutton]

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Some of the arguments used here are the same thing as saying something like "Well, this watt of energy comes from a hydroelectric plant and it will light this bulb for X hours. However, THIS watt of energy comes from a nuclear power plant, and it will light the same bulb for Y hours."

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there are many good reasons to care where a watt of energy comes from. for instance, energy derived from burning fossil fuels has more negative effects on the environment than engery derived from solar power. i am asking if the same is true of calories. should we care about the source?

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You're completely missing the point.

[heater]

Here's a good explanation:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._5/ai_n8694278

[duk]

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i don't see the point of the OPs question otherwise. unless he was asking if 500 calories = 500 calories in calories, which seems silly.

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This is what I think he's asking. People seem to be having a fantastically hard time wrapping their heads around this.

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This is pretty close to what I am asking, and perhaps it is silly. But if I set fire to a lump of coal and set fire to a piece of chicken breast and find that they each heat a kilogram of water the same amount (and thus produce the same number of calories), does this mean that if I eat both of them, both provide my body with the same number of calories?

The answer here is almost definitely no. Why should other substances be different?

[onthebutton]

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This comes from one of the fat threads, but seems like it might be worthy of an independent line of discussion.

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A calorie is a calorie, the source does not matter----IT IS A MEASUREMENT OF ENERGY AND NOTHING ELSE. A calorie = a calorie. A watt = a watt. A joule = a joule.

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Calories are measured by the amount of energy required to heat water, right? So a donut produces 500 calories when they burn in a fire (or however these things are measured), but may produce a completely different number of calories when your body processes it.

It doesn't seem too far fetched that some sorts of food items may produce calories at different rates outside and inside the body. That is, it seems possible that what is measured to be "500 calories of donut" might produce 400 calories in one's body while "500 calories of steak" might produce 200 calories in that same body, no?

If this is true, then eating 2000 calories as measured by the external calorie measurement process might actually provide one's body with very different amounts of calories depending on the food one eats, and how efficient one's body is at breaking it down.

Or perhaps 500 measured calories of donut equals 500 measured calories of steak regardless of the process used to release those calories. Someone who knows this stuff tell me what's up.

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He was claiming that whether you ate 2000 calories of healthy food or 2000 calories of crap, it was all the same and would all have the same effect on your body. That's the biggest pile of [censored] nonsense I've ever read in my life.

You need carbs, fat, and protein. You can't just chug lard for a year. You can't eat twinkies for a year. And you can't survive on nothing but skinless chicken breasts for a year. It's not the just the calorie count, but how the body breaks those calories down. Whey protein > egg protein > chicken protein, etc.

Let's take two guys of the same age in approximately the same physical health and my guy will eat 2,000 calories a day of foods that I prescribe. His guy will eat 2,000 calories a day of Twinkies. They will each perform the same amount of exercise each week. Do you really think these two will have the same body composition after a year's time?

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If the amount of calories burned are the same, and the amount of calories consumed are the same, they'll weigh the same at the end of the year. They won't have the same body composition, but their weights will be the same. Please see laws of thermodynamics, particularly those regarding conservation of energy.

[daryn]

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i don't see the point of the OPs question otherwise. unless he was asking if 500 calories = 500 calories in calories, which seems silly.

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This is what I think he's asking. People seem to be having a fantastically hard time wrapping their heads around this.

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This is pretty close to what I am asking, and perhaps it is silly. But if I set fire to a lump of coal and set fire to a piece of chicken breast and find that they each heat a kilogram of water the same amount (and thus produce the same number of calories), does this mean that if I eat both of them, both provide my body with the same number of calories?

The answer here is almost definitely no. Why should other substances be different?

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wrong, the answer here is definitely yes (assuming your body can actually digest coal.. which it can't as far as i know)

the human body can't digest a penny, if you eat one you will crap it out. yet a penny does have some caloric value.

[heater]

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If the amount of calories burned are the same, and the amount of calories consumed are the same, they'll weigh the same at the end of the year. They won't have the same body composition, but their weights will be the same.

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This is ridiculously false.

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Please see laws of thermodynamics, particularly those regarding conservation of energy.

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I understand the laws of thermodynamics. You, however, don't seem to have even the most basic understanding of nutrition.

[onthebutton]

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Here's a good explanation:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._5/ai_n8694278

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Again, when I say "basal metabolic rates are the same", and "amount of calories" burned are the same, the points in this paper are completely answered.

Look, an MD just stopped by my lab and I asked him this question. His reply "It's terribly unhealthy for someone to do something like that, but if the energy in and energy out is the same in both cases, the source of the calories doesn't make a difference."

[onthebutton]

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If the amount of calories burned are the same, and the amount of calories consumed are the same, they'll weigh the same at the end of the year. They won't have the same body composition, but their weights will be the same.

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This is ridiculously false.

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Extremely convincing argument.

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Please see laws of thermodynamics, particularly those regarding conservation of energy.

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I understand the laws of thermodynamics. You, however, don't seem to have even the most basic understanding of nutrition.

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It doesn't appear that you do. If energy in is equivalent to energy out, there can be no net loss/gain of energy. Do you get that?

[heater]

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If the amount of calories burned are the same, and the amount of calories consumed are the same, they'll weigh the same at the end of the year. They won't have the same body composition, but their weights will be the same.

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This is ridiculously false.

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Extremely convincing argument.

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Please see laws of thermodynamics, particularly those regarding conservation of energy.

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I understand the laws of thermodynamics. You, however, don't seem to have even the most basic understanding of nutrition.

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It doesn't appear that you do. If energy in is equivalent to energy out, there can be no net loss/gain of energy. Do you get that?

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Of course I do and I'm not arguing that.

I'm talking about how different types of food are processed in the body. Again, in the other thread you said this:

Assuming we have the same body composition and burn the same amount of calories per day, if I eat 1500 calories of lard per day and you eat 1550 calories of vegetables, over time I'll lose more weight (or gain less weight) than you will.

That is complete nonsense. That's all I've been saying here and it's true.

*edit* It's so obvious that it's like saying the sky is blue or 2+2=4. I'm done.

[duk]

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Look, an MD just stopped by my lab and I asked him this question. His reply "It's terribly unhealthy for someone to do something like that, but if the energy in and energy out is the same in both cases, the source of the food doesn't matter."

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Certainly if the energy in and energy out are the same it doesn't matter, because we've defined calories in to equal calories out.

The question is whether energy in as defined by burning things in a lab is equal to energy in as defined by my body.

In the same way that my body might only manage to squeeze 3 calories out of a 500-calorie lump of coal (or tree bark, or corn, or whatever, if you prefer) before excreting the rest, perhaps it might pull 200 calories out of the steak, and 400 out of the donut.