Also the way calories calculated in food is quite strange compared to how our bodies digest food.
They use bomb calorimeter and burn the food into ashes and calculate how much heat energy they input for burning vs how much extra heat is extracted.
Our bodies don’t “burn” food like that. We use complex hormones and chemical systems to break the weak bonds btw molecules and oxidize to convert to ATP.
Therefore 100 calories of ground beef will have a very different energy output of a 100 calories fruit juice for humans. Even different species metabolize foods in different ways.
There is simply no reliable way to estimate any food’s energy output for humans. Even every human are different than each other due to hormonal differences. Race, gender, age, DNA mutations, gut microbiome and lifestyle all these changes a person’s speed and efficiency of how a food will be metabolized.
When you have so much variables applied to an open system, thermodynamics discussion becomes obsolete.
But when you try saying that to any of the CICO ‘crowd‘ they just go ballistic - as if you were calling the earth flat, or denying the existence of the sun!
Unlikely defence against such vacuous claims , but my Engineering degree (I could even explain entropy for a while) plus a subsidiary topic of History & Philosophy of Science has kept me "safer" . I also particularly enjoy Gary Taubes' dismantling of "conventional wisdom" regarding nutrition !
This is an interesting talk about food mass and not calories being important. The study is useful to read, though I never had the time to get into the math.
Also the way calories calculated in food is quite strange compared to how our bodies digest food.
They use bomb calorimeter and burn the food into ashes and calculate how much heat energy they input for burning vs how much extra heat is extracted.
Our bodies don’t “burn” food like that. We use complex hormones and chemical systems to break the weak bonds btw molecules and oxidize to convert to ATP.
Therefore 100 calories of ground beef will have a very different energy output of a 100 calories fruit juice for humans. Even different species metabolize foods in different ways.
There is simply no reliable way to estimate any food’s energy output for humans. Even every human are different than each other due to hormonal differences. Race, gender, age, DNA mutations, gut microbiome and lifestyle all these changes a person’s speed and efficiency of how a food will be metabolized.
When you have so much variables applied to an open system, thermodynamics discussion becomes obsolete.
But when you try saying that to any of the CICO ‘crowd‘ they just go ballistic - as if you were calling the earth flat, or denying the existence of the sun!
Unlikely defence against such vacuous claims , but my Engineering degree (I could even explain entropy for a while) plus a subsidiary topic of History & Philosophy of Science has kept me "safer" . I also particularly enjoy Gary Taubes' dismantling of "conventional wisdom" regarding nutrition !
I have been saying this for years. Thank you for stating it so clearly, tactfully, and thoroughly. That is something I had not achieved.
This is an interesting talk about food mass and not calories being important. The study is useful to read, though I never had the time to get into the math.
https://youtu.be/0mnhha9JfCM?feature=shared