What's that thing about calories? That 300 calories of chocolate isn't the same as 300 calories of broccoli.

[DontBiteTheBoobThatFeedsYou]

It's been mention on here in the past and it pricked my ears.

Can someone explain it to me?

I need to feel better about my grape addiction. I knew telling myself that the calories aren't quite as bad as they would be if I was eating chocolate.

This chap carries out an interesting experiment -

He began his experiment to try to prove to his students that in weight loss, pure calorie counting matters more than the nutritional value of the food.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1328160/amp/Nutrition-professor-loses-2-stone-doughnuts-cakes-crisps-diet.html

@WeAreTheHeroes I miss read that as

I think your nuts ivykaty44

Mariell

but he didn't do the same diet eating a health diet of the same calorific amount

he would need to literally regain the same weight and then diet again using the foods suspected of being lower in calories than labelled and seeing the result - then comparing the difference, in time to lose the weight etc

The calorific value and weight are both red herrings I think. I have read in journals that sugar in high quantities leads to an imbalance in oxygen (explained as an 'oxygen robber') that means our cells age quicker and become unstable.

Eating 300 cals of broccoli will make you fart more than 300 cals of choc.

I think....
The amount of calories a food has is the total amount of chemical energy that food contains. (Ie, if you burnt it with 100% efficiency how much energy would be released as heat).
Your body is not 100% efficient at converting the chemical energy in the food. Some of that energy will be offset by the energy required to digest the food. Some of the food will not be digested at all, and will pass through your body (poo can be burnt, therefore it must still contain chemical energy, therefore not all the chemical energy you eat is absorbed by your body).

Your body can extract the chemical energy from some foods more efficiently than others.
If you eat 100 calories of white sugar, you will convert more of it than if you ate 100 calories of celery.
I imagine that if you ate 100 calories of, eg, grass, you would get almost no energy from it because humans cannot digest grass (unlike cows etc). Hence why we cannot survive on grass, and why we crave energy dense easy to digest foods like sugar.

The guy who lost weight eating junk food (mark Taub) was funded by Coca Cola, although he kept that quiet at the time. Very convenient for Coca Cola to promote the belief that it's calories themselves that matter, rather than the form such calories take.

My understanding of the importance of the food type that supplies the calories is the effect on the body's insulin levels. Foods high in sugar or containing highly refined carbs lead to a rise in insulin levels in the blood which encourages the body to store fat. Once the insulin levels fall, as they do, rapidly, once the food has been digested, the appetite is stimulated to crave yet more sugary or processed foods.

Maybe my explanation isn't 100%, but I think that's the gist. Basically, different food types are metabolised differently by the body.

On top of that, some people are genetically predisposed to gain weight, whilst others are not. Some people really can eat as much cr*p food as they like and never gain weight.

From my old body building days

Glycemic index? Some foods (ie sugary) will have a stronger insulin response - insulting tells cells to turn the sugar into fat (this is simplified - my sports science is an old memory). Also proteins and fats are harder to digest (burn more calories to digest them) do not cause the same insulin response. This is old science - things may have moved on…

Here's the thing...

31 kcal / 91 grams of broccoli
340 kcal/ 1 kg of broccoli

2.4 grams fibre/ 100 g of brocoli
"135% of the RDI for Vit. C. Vitamin A: 11% of the RDI. Vitamin K: 116% of the RDI." (says google)
So 1 kg of broccoli would be 1000+% of Vit C & Vit K?

24 g fibre / 1 kg of brocoli
That is literally the same as recommended daily fibre for women, and 50% MORE than most people get. So most people would find it ... too much.

[quote Mariell]This chap carries out an interesting experiment -

He began his experiment to try to prove to his students that in weight loss, pure calorie counting matters more than the nutritional value of the food.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1328160/amp/Nutrition-professor-loses-2-stone-doughnuts-cakes-crisps-diet.html[/quote]
He must have been absolutely starving throughout that experiment.