Nutrition: Is counting calories not only outdated but dangerous?

But is this the right approach, or is it time to rethink it? Not only do some experts claim that counting calories is outdated, they also claim that it’s dangerous, as we show here with Calorie History.

A calorie is a unit of energy, often used to express the nutritional value of food.

The term comes from the Latin calor, meaning heat, and has been in use for over a century.

Dr Giles Yeo, professor of molecular endocrinology at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC: “Nicholas Kleiman defined a calorie as the amount of heat needed to raise a liter of water to 1 degree Celsius at sea level.”

The French scientist Clement was the first to use this word in lectures on heat engines in the early 19th century.

Hence the dictionary definition today, that one calorie is equal to the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius, and a thousand small calories: one kilocalorie.

The scientific ability to accurately measure the calorie content of foods marked a turning point.

“We’ve suddenly moved from a world where it was thought that someone’s diet was directly related to their race, the climate they live in, their social class, and of course their gender, and where you couldn’t compare two diets, but all of a sudden you couldn’t compare two diets,” said Nick Colther, professor of history and international studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. , “It was comparable.”

Our perception of food has undergone a massive change. People have started to think of food as the sum of many components such as proteins, carbohydrates, micronutrients, fats, etc.

“The body is now seen as an engine and food as a fuel, which has changed the way people view food,” says Kolther.

In the twentieth century, calories began to influence public policy. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese Navy implemented a dietary standard for its sailors, allegedly in an effort to bring them in line with European standards. Wheat and meat, especially pork and chicken, were added to the diet of sailors and announced to the general public in Japan. Arguably, the Japanese food that many of us enjoy today is the result of this change in diet.

For decades, the United States has used calorie counting to determine how much food aid to send to countries experiencing drought. The League of Nations, which emerged from the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, studied nutrition, setting a global standard in 1935, recommending that an average adult should eat 2,500 calories per day.

Today, the widely accepted standard is 2,500 calories per day for men and 2,000 calories for women.

Some experts say counting calories is outdated and here’s why.

Although different foods have the same energy value, they may not provide the same nutritional or health benefits. For example – a glass of milk contains about 184 calories and a similar glass of pure beer contains less than 137 calories.

“We don’t actually eat calories; we eat food and then our bodies have to work to extract the calories. Depending on what kind of food you’re eating, carrots, donuts, steak, the body has to work to different degrees to extract the calories,” says geneticist Giles Yu. .

The labels we see on supermarket foods tell us how many calories a serving contains, but they won’t tell you how much our bodies can absorb them.

He adds, “For every 100 calories of protein we eat, we’ll only take in 70 calories. So 30% of our protein calories will stretch into our protein intake so we can take in the calories.”

“Fat, on the other hand, is very energy-dense and a very efficient fuel store. For every 100 calories of fat we consume, we get approximately 98 to 100 calories from fat,” says Yu.

Simply put, if you eat 100 calories of potato chips, you will get a lot more calories than eating 100 calories of carrots.

Yeo argues that counting calories as a diet is meaningless unless you consider the type of food you’re eating. And the complexity doesn’t stop there.

The amount of energy each of us will get from a given food will be affected by a host of individual variables such as age, how much sleep we get, how much gut bacteria and hormones we have, how we chew our food, etc. . Processed foods, protein and fiber are eliminated while fat, sugar and salt are added, making foods high in calories but low in nutritional value.

“Calories give you quantity. They’re independent of nutritional content. They don’t tell you how much fat, sugar, carbohydrates, fiber, and vitamins. That’s my problem with calories. It’s a brutal tool,” says Yu, who argues that calorie counting may actually encourage us to make unhealthy choices. healthy.

“This focus on calories is harmful to people,” warns Adrienne Rose Bitar, an expert in American food and health history and culture at Cornell University in New York, who argues that obsessing over calories and enrolling in calorie-reduction programs can create problems.

“Unlike an alcoholic who can quit smoking, you can’t stop eating.

“Many eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and orthorexia begin with a harmless calorie-counting program,” Bitar says.

She says some programs even advise people to survive on diets that are dangerously low in calories.

Outside the food industry, energy is not measured in calories but in joules. Some food companies now provide the value of a food in kilojoules.

But calories have captured the public’s imagination so much that even those who don’t know what they are are able to understand that consuming too many calories is bad for your health.

Some experts like Bridget Benelam of the British Nutrition Foundation warn us not to cut calories. For all its flaws, she points out, calories do have a functional value.

“Obesity is probably the biggest public health problem we face right now, so it’s important to understand what drives people to become obese and overweight,” says Bennelam.

For some people who want to lose weight, she says counting calories can be very helpful when planning a weight loss plan.

“It’s important to understand what people are eating and where those calories are coming from. So, for example, when we look at whether people eat a lot of saturated fat, we calculate that based on how many calories they eat. Saturated fat. So, from the point of view of Scientifically speaking, these are important things to measure and an important thing to understand, you say.

In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) says people need to balance the energy they take in with the energy they use, and says you don’t need to worry if you end up overeating once in a while. energy in the following days.”

This article is based on two World Service radio shows, Food Chain and Forum.