The Calorie Delusion

Here is an interesting article I found at New Scientist entitled “The Calorie Delusion: Why Food Labels Are Wrong”.  You can read the full-story by clicking here.

Here is a summary of the article:

“STANDING in line at the coffee shop you feel a little peckish. So what will you choose to keep you going until lunchtime? Will it be that scrumptious-looking chocolate brownie or perhaps a small, nut-based muesli bar. You check the labels: the brownie contains around 250 kilocalories (kcal), while the muesli bar contains more than 300. Surprised at the higher calorie count of what looks like the healthy option, you go for the brownie.

This is the kind of decision that people watching their weight – or even just keeping a casual eye on it – make every day. As long as we keep our calorie intake at around the recommended daily values of 2000 for women and 2500 for men, and get a good mix of nutrients, surely we can eat whatever we like?”

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In other experiments Secor tested the energy differences between cooked and raw carrots when fed to bearded dragons. Unlike pythons these lizards are omnivorous, which makes it possible to test the response of the digestive system when raised on a strictly herbivorous, carnivorous or omnivorous diet. By counting the number of chews the dragons took before swallowing the food, his preliminary findings suggest that the cooked carrots require only about half as many chews as the raw vegetable, which corresponds to more than a 40 per cent drop in the energy needed to chew.

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The full article is definately worth the read as it will open your eyes on food labels and calories – I know it was an eye opener for me!

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