Help me understand calories

[Yobz]

People say that 1000 calories from junk food is different than 1000 calories from fruits/veggies. I want to make sure I understand why.

The differences I see are this:
- Sugar-based junk food will give you an insulin spike and make you hungry again soon
- Fruits/veggies have more vitamins/minerals/etc

I don't see the difference between pretzels, for example, and fruit. Besides the vitamins/minerals, they are both carb-heavy. I guess the biggest difference is that pretzels are so dense, so it is easier to eat a lot of them as opposed to fruit which have lots of water and eating 1000 calories of apples is difficult. You'll get full or sick of eating before you make it through the meal.

Any help?
Thanks

[thirddan]

one thing in your example is that fruit sugar is primarily fructose which doesn't spike insulin...

[cbloom]

1000 calories = 1000 calories in terms of weight gain/loss, if all other factors are held constant.

However, those calories have affects on your body other than just weight gain/loss.

As for fruit vs. pretzels -

fruit has more fiber & water so it's actually harder to eat as many calories as you get from pretzels, you get all the vitamins & minerals, perhaps the fructose provides more steady energy than the flour in pretzels dunno about that.

But yeah, generally the biggest difference comes from the fact that "all other factors held constant" is not usually done. If you eat 1000 calories of sugars you probably crash and eat again or aren't as physically active, maybe you don't consume enough protein and fat and vitamins, etc.

It's sort of a trick, just like the Atkins diet is really a trick. People lose weight on Atkins because they eat fewer calories, not because the calories are somehow better for weight loss. The diet says you can eat as much as you want, but the fact is that people can very easily eat a ton of calories on sugary starchy snacks, and it's just really hard to eat an insane amount of calories if you restrict yourself to meat veg and fruit.



(BTW I know people will talk about the thermogenic effects of some foods and so on - that is a microscopic factor in the scheme of things)

[diddyeinstein]

I think they might be getting concepts confused. A calorie is a unit of energy (the amount of energy it takes to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius), for food intake we use kilocalories (increase 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius) but refer to them as calories.

Since it's a unit of measurement, there are inherently no 'good' calories or 'bad' calories. That would be like discussing good inches or bad liters.

In short, tell them they are wrong. Unless I am.

[kevin017]

1000 calories of fruit carbs is exactly the same as 1000 calories of junk food carbs in terms of weight gain/loss, its just easier to eat too much junk food than too much fruit, and fruit has some vitamins/etc.

[J.R.]

I think you get the insulin issue, but for further reference, check below.

Insulin spike does not just result in increased hunger, but also stops your body from burning fat and causes the body to store glucose (sugars) that are present in the bloodstream.

[ QUOTE ]
Insulin and insulin resistance
Each time we eat, insulin is released into the bloodstream. This vital hormone, secreted by special cells in the pancreas, encourages our tissues - our muscles in particular - to gobble up the glucose surging through the bloodstream after we eat a meal.
insulin and the pancreas

That's good news, because glucose hanging around in the blood is dangerous stuff. It can stick to proteins and destroy their ability to do their job. Kidney damage, blindness, and amputations may result.

But insulin has many other vital roles. After a meal, insulin stops the liver from releasing any fat, a potential metabolic fuel, into the blood. Why after a meal? It turns out that just like glucose, these fats, released as triglycerides, are dangerous if they hang about in the blood too long.

In some organisms, insulin plays the role of controlling their lifespan. What is the purpose of insulin in humans? If you ask your physician, they will say that the role of insulin is to lower blood sugar and you must learn right now, that is one of insulin's many roles.

Insulin, sugar, and glycogen

When your body notices that the sugar level is elevated, it is a sign that you have more sugar than you need right now, your body is not burning it and therefore it is accumulating in your blood. So insulin is released to take that sugar and store it. How does it store it? Glycogen? Your body stores very little glycogen at any one time. All the glycogen stored in your liver and muscles would not last you through 1 active day. Once you have filled up your glycogen stores, that sugar is stored as saturated fat.

So the idea of medical professionals recommending a high complex-carbohydrate, low-saturated-fat diet is absolutely a mistake. A high complex-carbohydrate diet is nothing more than a high-glucose diet, or a high-sugar diet. Your body is just going to store it as saturated fat, and the body makes it into saturated fat quite readily.

Your body's principal way of getting rid of sugar, because it is toxic, is to burn it. The sugar which your body can't burn will be rid of by storing it as glycogen, and when those glycogen reserves are full, sugar gets stored as fat. If you eat sugar your body will burn it and you stop burning fat. Another major effect of insulin on fat is it prevents you from burning it.

[/ QUOTE ]
link

The hunger stuff happens because:

[ QUOTE ]
One disadvantage to having an insulin spike due to a high glycemic index carbohydrate is overeating.

Have you ever noticed when you are at the movies and you have just a small handful of candy, you are fine for about 10 to 20 minutes, but then you just can't help but have more. The reason behind this is that when you first consume the high sugar candy, your body absorbs it and blood sugar levels are raised. In response to this your body triggers the pancreas to release insulin.

This insulin spike, because it is so rapid, is often a little too much. What this means is your blood sugar levels drop slightly below what they were before eating the candy. When your body senses the low blood sugar, it releases hormones which trigger hunger. It is your body's way of controlling the blood sugar. If insulin levels are too low, it triggers hunger, and you eat, raising them up, if it is too high, you feel somewhat satisfied, not eating, giving your body a chance to store the blood sugar as muscle glycogen.

[/ QUOTE ]
link

[J.R.]

BTW, this whole western diet high in GI index carbs and the resulting insulin implications are a big part of what metabolic syndrome is all about.

[ QUOTE ]
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are occurring at epidemic rates in the United States and many parts of the world. The "obesity epidemic" appears to have emerged largely from changes in our diet and reduced physical activity. An important but not well-appreciated dietary change has been the substantial increase in the amount of dietary fructose consumption from high intake of sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener used in the food industry. A high flux of fructose to the liver, the main organ capable of metabolizing this simple carbohydrate, perturbs glucose metabolism and glucose uptake pathways, and leads to a significantly enhanced rate of de novo lipogenesis and triglyceride (TG) synthesis, driven by the high flux of glycerol and acyl portions of TG molecules from fructose catabolism. These metabolic disturbances appear to underlie the induction of insulin resistance commonly observed with high fructose feeding in both humans and animal models. Fructose-induced insulin resistant states are commonly characterized by a profound metabolic dyslipidemia, which appears to result from hepatic and intestinal overproduction of atherogenic lipoprotein particles. Thus, emerging evidence from recent epidemiological and biochemical studies clearly suggests that the high dietary intake of fructose has rapidly become an important causative factor in the development of the metabolic syndrome. There is an urgent need for increased public awareness of the risks associated with high fructose consumption and greater efforts should be made to curb the supplementation of packaged foods with high fructose additives. The present review will discuss the trends in fructose consumption, the metabolic consequences of increased fructose intake, and the molecular mechanisms leading to fructose-induced lipogenesis, insulin resistance and metabolic dyslipidemia.

[/ QUOTE ]

link

[Yobz]

This:

[ QUOTE ]
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are occurring at epidemic rates in the United States and many parts of the world. The "obesity epidemic" appears to have emerged largely from changes in our diet and reduced physical activity. An important but not well-appreciated dietary change has been the substantial increase in the amount of dietary fructose consumption from high intake of sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener used in the food industry. A high flux of fructose to the liver, the main organ capable of metabolizing this simple carbohydrate, perturbs glucose metabolism and glucose uptake pathways, and leads to a significantly enhanced rate of de novo lipogenesis and triglyceride (TG) synthesis, driven by the high flux of glycerol and acyl portions of TG molecules from fructose catabolism. These metabolic disturbances appear to underlie the induction of insulin resistance commonly observed with high fructose feeding in both humans and animal models. Fructose-induced insulin resistant states are commonly characterized by a profound metabolic dyslipidemia, which appears to result from hepatic and intestinal overproduction of atherogenic lipoprotein particles. Thus, emerging evidence from recent epidemiological and biochemical studies clearly suggests that the high dietary intake of fructose has rapidly become an important causative factor in the development of the metabolic syndrome. There is an urgent need for increased public awareness of the risks associated with high fructose consumption and greater efforts should be made to curb the supplementation of packaged foods with high fructose additives. The present review will discuss the trends in fructose consumption, the metabolic consequences of increased fructose intake, and the molecular mechanisms leading to fructose-induced lipogenesis, insulin resistance and metabolic dyslipidemia.

[/ QUOTE ]
Seems to contradict this:

[ QUOTE ]
one thing in your example is that fruit sugar is primarily fructose which doesn't spike insulin...

[/ QUOTE ]

[Yobz]

This:

[ QUOTE ]
I think you get the insulin issue, but for further reference, check below.

Insulin spike does not just result in increased hunger, but also stops your body from burning fat and causes the body to store glucose (sugars) that are present in the bloodstream.

[ QUOTE ]
Insulin and insulin resistance
Each time we eat, insulin is released into the bloodstream. This vital hormone, secreted by special cells in the pancreas, encourages our tissues - our muscles in particular - to gobble up the glucose surging through the bloodstream after we eat a meal.
insulin and the pancreas

That's good news, because glucose hanging around in the blood is dangerous stuff. It can stick to proteins and destroy their ability to do their job. Kidney damage, blindness, and amputations may result.

But insulin has many other vital roles. After a meal, insulin stops the liver from releasing any fat, a potential metabolic fuel, into the blood. Why after a meal? It turns out that just like glucose, these fats, released as triglycerides, are dangerous if they hang about in the blood too long.

In some organisms, insulin plays the role of controlling their lifespan. What is the purpose of insulin in humans? If you ask your physician, they will say that the role of insulin is to lower blood sugar and you must learn right now, that is one of insulin's many roles.

Insulin, sugar, and glycogen

When your body notices that the sugar level is elevated, it is a sign that you have more sugar than you need right now, your body is not burning it and therefore it is accumulating in your blood. So insulin is released to take that sugar and store it. How does it store it? Glycogen? Your body stores very little glycogen at any one time. All the glycogen stored in your liver and muscles would not last you through 1 active day. Once you have filled up your glycogen stores, that sugar is stored as saturated fat.

So the idea of medical professionals recommending a high complex-carbohydrate, low-saturated-fat diet is absolutely a mistake. A high complex-carbohydrate diet is nothing more than a high-glucose diet, or a high-sugar diet. Your body is just going to store it as saturated fat, and the body makes it into saturated fat quite readily.

Your body's principal way of getting rid of sugar, because it is toxic, is to burn it. The sugar which your body can't burn will be rid of by storing it as glycogen, and when those glycogen reserves are full, sugar gets stored as fat. If you eat sugar your body will burn it and you stop burning fat. Another major effect of insulin on fat is it prevents you from burning it.

[/ QUOTE ]
link

The hunger stuff happens because:

[ QUOTE ]
One disadvantage to having an insulin spike due to a high glycemic index carbohydrate is overeating.

Have you ever noticed when you are at the movies and you have just a small handful of candy, you are fine for about 10 to 20 minutes, but then you just can't help but have more. The reason behind this is that when you first consume the high sugar candy, your body absorbs it and blood sugar levels are raised. In response to this your body triggers the pancreas to release insulin.

This insulin spike, because it is so rapid, is often a little too much. What this means is your blood sugar levels drop slightly below what they were before eating the candy. When your body senses the low blood sugar, it releases hormones which trigger hunger. It is your body's way of controlling the blood sugar. If insulin levels are too low, it triggers hunger, and you eat, raising them up, if it is too high, you feel somewhat satisfied, not eating, giving your body a chance to store the blood sugar as muscle glycogen.

[/ QUOTE ]
link

[/ QUOTE ]

Seems to imply that 1000 calories of junk food (carbs) makes you fatter than 1000 calories of chicken (protein).

Is this true, or is the effect of the above small enough that it's biggest contribution to weight gain/loss is overeating?

[cbloom]

[ QUOTE ]

Seems to imply that 1000 calories of junk food (carbs) makes you fatter than 1000 calories of chicken (protein).

Is this true, or is the effect of the above small enough that it's biggest contribution to weight gain/loss is overeating?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, the implications in that quote seem to be slightly wrong.

They're implying that eating too much sugar makes it get stored in fat, which makes you fat.

That's bad old pseudoscience sort of like "eating fat makes you fat" or "do low intensity cardio to burn more fat". The truth is that eating food and storing energy as fat does not mean you will be gaining fat. It's now widely established that short term fat burn or fat gain really has a very small affect on body composition and by far the dominating factor is just if you are running a caloric deficit or not.

On the other hand, in practice it basically is right. If you eat a lot of sugar, it will turn into fat and you will also lose energy because of the insulin spike, so you're unlikely to work out hard. Even if you do work out hard you may not be getting enough protein and may not have good muscle balance.

For example, two people who both burn 2500 calories and eat 2500 calories - neither will gain or lose any weight, but if one of them eats mostly simple carbs and the other eats mostly protein and veg, the latter will have a better muscle/fat ratio if they do the same exercise.

And of course as JR points out there are many health affects of food besides just weight gain/loss.