"Percent calories from xxx": the latest nutritional hoax!

(article link for better charts: [www.ecologos.org])
(NOTE: THE POINT OF THIS ARTICLE IS THAT, WHY WOULD US RAW VEGANS DEFY ORTHODOX NUTRITION RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE US, BY EATING FRUITS/GREENS/VEGGIES, WHICH IS THE NATURAL HUMAN DIET, AND THEN FALL BACK INTO THEIR LIES AND TRAPS BY BELIEVING IN THE HOAX THAT IS "THE CALORIE THEORY" - SURE, CALORIES ARE A SMALL FACTOR, BUT OVERALL IRRELEVENT.... ENERGY IS CONSUMED BY HUMAN BEINGS IN A HALF DOZEN OTHER WAYS BESIDES "CALORIES" IN FOOD, AS WELL AS THE METABOLISM ADJUSTS TO THE FUEL INTAKE YOU GIVE IT, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND...)


From the same folks who brought you the horrendous lies about The Four Food Groups, the "need" for humans to consume dead, rotting animal corpses, bird menses, and bovine beverage, comes recently yet another totally useless, intentionally misleading, mathematically absurd, and only confusing concept: "Percent of calories from xxx".

First, a calorie is nothing more, or less, that a unit of energy, just as the BTU, erg, foot-pound, joule, horsepower-hour, watt-hour, electron-volt, or Newton-meter are. The term "calorie", as uniformly misused in the bizarre pseudoscience of orthodox nutrition, is really the kilocalorie: the amount of heat required to raise a kilogram of water one degree Centigrade. The way the 'calorie content' of a substance is determined is to burn one gram of it to completion in high-pressure, pure oxygen in a Parr calorimeter bomb and measure the amount of heat released.

How does this relate to human nutrition? It really does not, because we do NOT "burn" our eaten food to completion, as always occurs in the Parr bomb. Here, "burning to completion" means that all the carbon is burned completely to carbon dioxide, and all the hydrogen is burned completely to water; clearly this does not happen in human digestion! In fact, since all proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are NOT used for energy, and are indeed used for other quite different purposes than producing energy, the abstract "calorie content" of "foods" and nutrients is absolutely irrelevant and meaningless. Worse, thinking that one calorie-equivalent of protein, one calorie-equivalent of fat, or one calorie-equivalent of carbohydrate are in any way similar or identical, as seen by our digestive biochemistry, is simply absurd. Would a 'calorie' of DDT, gasoline, wood, alcohol, diamond, feces, iron, or an old shoe, be somehow 'equivalent' to a calorie of protein, fat, or cho? Obviously not. Further, since a calorie is a unit of energy, it can NOT be "burned" as is foolishly claimed in the currently popular nutribabble about "burning calories"!. What would you get? Calorie oxide?

Calories are a useful concept in thermodynamics and physics, but they are totally irrelevant to human nutrition or diet. It makes as much sense to try to classify and/or quantify "foods" by their density, color, refractive index, shape, electrical conductivity, pH, heat capacity, tensile strength, compressive modulus, sheer modulus, melting point, boiling point, thermal conductivity, dielectric constant, absorption spectra, dipole moment, optical rotation, solubility, surface tension, thermal expansion, vapor pressure, viscosity, reaction kinetics, or any other -totally irrelevant- physical property as their "calorie content".

Next, we see that the "% calories as xxx" concept is similarly absurd and intentionally misleading.

In the irrational pseudoscience called "Nutrition" we have of late seen such claims as:

Analysis: Soy Milk

8 fl oz Soy Milk

Wgt: 240 g (8.47 oz)
Water: 93%
Calories 79.2
Protein 6.62 g
Carbohydrates 4.37 g
Fat - Total 4.61 g, which leads to:

Calorie Breakdown
======-----------------0----------25----------50----------75----------100
Protein 31% ########
Carbohydrates 20% ######
Fat-Total 49% ##############


Where did these numbers come from??
Calculate the calories from each major nutrient by multiplying grams of each by standard cal/gram calorie content of each.

Nutrient grams cal/gram calories "% cal from"
pro
6.62 4 26.5 31
cho 4.37 4 17.5 20
fat 4.61 9 41.5 49
Total 85.5 100

That's where the "percent of calories from protein, carbohydrate, and fat" figures actually come from.
However, what do they MEAN?? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!
In the entirety of scientific endeavor, numbers are used to compare quantities of various parameters, and generally if the quantities (numbers) of various parameters of two different entities are equal, we can generally imply some sort of equality, equivalence, or interchangeability between the entities.
E.g. if both Mary and John earn $10/hr, we can say their hourly incomes are equal. Or, the 10 grams of protein from Food A is the same amount as 10 grams from Food B.

But, in the wacky pseudoscience of orthodox nutrition, "foods" with identical "percent of calories from pro, cho, and fat" may be incredibly DIFFERENT and may provide VERY DIFFERENT amounts of pro, cho, and fat!! Thus, comparing "foods" with identical "% of calories from xxx" profiles in any meaningful way is absolutely not possible, nor is there any meaningful relationship or understanding to be drawn by regarding these numbers!

Example #1:

Let's look at two hypothetical "foods":

Food #1: 1% pro, 1% cho, 1% fat Food #2: 33% pro, 33% cho, 33% fat
grams cal % of cal grams cal % of cal
pro 1 4 24 33 132 24
cho 1 4 24 33 132 24
fat 1 9 52 33 297 52
H2O 97 0 0 1 0 0
Total 100 17 100 100 561 100

So, are we to believe that we get identical nutrition from each of these foods, if we eat the same amount of each, because their calorie profiles are equal?? NO!!
Food #2 would provide 33 times as much pro, cho, and fat and 33 times as many calories! Food #2 is 33 times as nutrient dense as Food #1 even though the "percent of calories from xxx" are numerically identical.
Further, one would get the same PCF profile from an infinite number of foods with the same weight ratios; i.e. 1.1/1.1/1.1, 1.11/1.11/1.11, ... 2.1/2.1/2.1, ... in spite of the fact that their absolute quantities of macronutrients were different.
Biochemistry, and digestion, occur as a function of absolute quantities, not internal ratios of meaningless numbers.
This is why the "percent of calories from xxx" is totally meaningless and, worse, leads only to confusion that obfuscates the differences between high-fat and low-fat "foods".

Example #2:

Let's look at an even more dramatic numerical example that points out the absolute lack of meaning in the "percent of calories from xxx" fantasy. We have a cup filled with water and add one drop of vegetable oil: then, percent of calories from fat = 100%. We have a swimming pool a million times as big filled with pork fat: the percent of calories from fat = 100%.
Are we really supposed to believe that because the calorie profiles are the same, that the effects from eating each are the same??

Example #3:

One is generally interested in the quantity of a certain nutrient consumed per day: the RDA's are given in grams per day. If we have a certain food with, say, 10% of calories as protein, how much of this food should we eat to get 20 grams of protein?? There is NO way to calculate this, since the absolute amounts of all nutrients are irreversibly lost when one goes from true weight percent to "percent of calories from ...".

Example #4:

Just why was this meaningless pseudoscientific unit introduced to a public that is already very confused about what a healthful diet for our species should be?? To encourage the ignorant public to consume even more high-fat foods!

Apple Prime Beef beef/apple
wt % % cal wt % % cal ratio wt % ratio % cal
H2O 84.4 44.8
pro 0.2 1.2 13.6 12.8 68 10.7
cho 14.5 90.3 0 0
fat 0.6 5.4 41 87.2 68.3 16.1
cal 58 428

So, if we compare prime beef to an apple using standard weight percentages, we see that beef has 68 times as much protein and 68.3 times as much fat as apples; but, if we use the intentionally misleading, new % calories from xxx units, we get the very wrong impression that beef has only 10.7 times as much protein, and only 16.1 times as much fat as an apple.
The conclusion to be formed from this is that the new pseudoscientific unit: "% calories from xxx", was invented to intentionally obscure the obvious and great differences between high-fat and high-protein animal products, and more healthful foods suited for our evolutionary history and primate physiology, such as fruits and vegetables. It is an intentional ploy to make meat, and other high-fat/high-protein animal products, appear to be more like fruits and vegetables.
Nowhere in real science do we see such meaningless, confusing, and mathematically absurd units; only in the wacky world of orthodox nutritional pseudoscience.
Fortunately, the "% cal as xxx" is a good quack detector.

J Am Diet Assoc 2003 Jul;103(7):867-872
Did fat intake in the United States really decline between 1989-1991 and 1994-1996?
Chanmugam P, Guthrie JF, Cecilio S, Morton JF, Basiotis PP, Anand R P.
Chanmugam is an assistant professor in the School of Human Ecology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. J. F. Guthrie is assistant deputy director, Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC. S. Cecilio was an intern with the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition within the Food and Drug Administration, Washington, DC. J. F. Morton is a program analyst with the Veterans Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC. P. P. Basiotis is the director and R. Anand is the former executive director of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.

The objectives of this study were to determine changes in fat and energy intakes in the United States between 1989-1991 and 1994-1996, and to examine the implications of expressing fat intake in grams vs as a percent of total energy intake. The source of data was the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals. The results suggest that intake of energy rose between the 2 time periods, primarily due to higher carbohydrate intake. There was also a modest increase in fat intake. However fat intake, as a percent of total energy, declined. The higher energy intakes were primarily from beverages, especially soft drinks, food mixtures, grain snacks, and pastries. The primary sources of higher fat intakes were meat mixtures, vegetables, and some categories of the grain group. Similar trends in the Food Supply Series suggested that the changes observed were not entirely due to changes in survey methodology. Because the increase in fat intake was masked by the increase in energy intake, we conclude that assessing trends in fat intake as a percent of energy consumption can be misleading, unless information on total energy and fat intake, in grams, [Note: the standard throughout all of science, except the pseudoscience of nutrition - ljf] is also provided. These preliminary findings should be interpreted cautiously until they are confirmed by formal secular trend analyses. J Am Diet Assoc. 2003;103:867-872.

PMID: 12830026




ttdd

Home page

I guess it's the Calorie that gets many people into Trouble.
I live in a Retirement Community where Obesity runs Rampant....
bored people with nothing much to do. I could easily become one
of them. I'm 'fighting' not to.
The 'Quantum Eating' program that I'm beginning, says that
More Energy is can be obtained with Fewer Calories, depending
on What is eaten, and When.......WY

Rock ON W-Yogi! You speak the Truth...

Last year I was stressing about calories but this time around I don't care I just eat raw foods and don't get in a frenzy about calories. After hearing Tanya Zavasta speak and reading her book Quantum eating I feel the same as wheat grass yogi Less is best.

Thanks for the post it refreashed be about what Tanya spoke about.

wooway Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rock ON W-Yogi! You speak the Truth...
That's kind of you Wooway. Could you tell
us a little about yourself? Your name sounds Chinese.
.....I've been maintaining my weight on my present diet.
Now to cut some Calories, and 'see' if Calorie Restriction
is what it's cracked-up to be. I think the only danger is
that some people can't adjust to the right amount, but keep
cutting......WY

Finally someone who thinks around science in here. It's nice to read.

Please give more information on your diet, I am so interested. I am also in a rut - I don't know whether or not to keep it up with all fruit (though I read your other post and most of the fruit I eat - most of the calories come from bananas and dates.) I was thinking that since it's the fall and winter and I don't really know what fruit to eat to keep my energy levels high other then bananas and dates- I might start adding more squash and vegetables and quinoa (and other pseudograins that do not contain gluten). What about other legumes, other then chickpeas. Which ones are good to eat, and what is your stance on sprouting/cooking beans/legumes/grains.

Calories are useful for the beginning raw foodist. People who have been eating cooked foods for a long time have very tiny stomach, which is OK with cooked foods, since a small volume of food can equal quite a bit of calories/energy. When going to raw foods, a person's belly might be full, but they are getting much less calories/energy that eating their normal cooked diet. So comparing the calorie intake with one's cooked and raw foods makes sense to see if one is eating the same amount of calorie/energy as they used to eat on cooked.

The reason I bring this up is some people get down to dangerously low body weight on raw foods, or they run out of energy very quickly. While they may think they are eating a lot of food, compared to their cooked diet, they might only be eating 1/4 the calories. So understanding where one's energy comes from makes sense.

The other place it makes sense to watch the calories is to see if one's calories on raw foods are coming from fat or from carbohydrates. If most of the calories are coming from fat, declining health most follows. Eating too much fat is one of the common reasons why people have a difficult time eating only raw foods.

-
> Finally someone who thinks around science in here.
> It's nice to read.
>

the article is simply reprinted from laurie at ecologos.


>I don't really know
> what fruit to eat to keep my energy levels high
> other then bananas and dates

neither fruit in general or specific fruits do not keep energy levels high.
it simply is sustenance to enable the normal working condition of the body.