Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
A CALORIE is a calorie. This truism has been the foundation of nutritional wisdom and our beliefs about obesity since the 1960s.
What it means is that a calorie of protein will generate the same energy when metabolized in a living organism as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. When talking about obesity or why we get fat, evoking the phrase ?a calorie is a calorie? is almost invariably used to imply that what we eat is relatively unimportant. We get fat because we take in more calories than we expend; we get lean if we do the opposite. Anyone who tells you otherwise, by this logic, is trying to sell you something.
But not everyone buys this calorie argument, and the dispute erupted in full force again last week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really-makes-us-fat.html
What it means is that a calorie of protein will generate the same energy when metabolized in a living organism as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. When talking about obesity or why we get fat, evoking the phrase ?a calorie is a calorie? is almost invariably used to imply that what we eat is relatively unimportant. We get fat because we take in more calories than we expend; we get lean if we do the opposite. Anyone who tells you otherwise, by this logic, is trying to sell you something.
But not everyone buys this calorie argument, and the dispute erupted in full force again last week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really-makes-us-fat.html