6 ms·

> 9 Kcal/g for fat. [...] These numbers were originally determined by burning This method for calculating the calorie count for fat has in my opinion allowed t

by tezza 10y ago

> 9 Kcal/g for fat. [...] These numbers were originally determined by burning This method for calculating the calorie count for fat has in my opinion allowed the demonisation of fat. Our stomachs are imperfect at digesting globules of fat. Burning-until-gone releases much more of the energy than surface acting acids and proteinases. Effective calorie count for fat just has to be so much lower than the listed value. Constrast that with sugars, where the absorbtion mechanism is crystaline dissolution. Disolving crystals is an almost perfect 1-1 process

maxerickson 10y ago
It's a well understood process: https://courses.washington.edu/conj/bess/fats/fats.html https://courses.washington.edu/conj/bess/fats/fats.html Also, you can experience what happens when you don't digest fat by eating a good bit of Olestra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects
- snewk 10y ago
  don't eat olestra
  - goldenkey 10y ago
    Also dont eat fish oil capsules on an empty stomach. Your Herman Miller chair will receive a present that you could not help deliver. The oil will literally leak out since there is no other digested food to keep it behind your sphinter. One of the weirdest stenches of partially digested fish oil bile that resists all attempts to nuetralize the stain and odor. I am passing on great wisdom as funny and crude as it sounds..(That chair was eventually sold at a huge discount and was probably bleached. Steelcase Worklounge is better anyhow so I'm not totally out of shape about it.)
ysleepy 10y ago
The body is very efficient in storing fat, more than carbs or protein. But burning fat is inefficient. But this is just from the top of my head. I think its just a lot easier to eat a lot of carbs. Fats and protein make me much more saturated more quickly. I don't think there is some magic formula.
- ljf 10y ago
  Storing fat? ... You know have to burn the the fat to be able to store it? The fat doesn't have some other pathway from stomach to body fat - all the 'fat' you carry has been burned to get there. So whatever you have been overeating will be the cause.
- nck4222 10y ago
  In general your body doesn't take the fat you eat and store it as fat. It takes the excess sugars and stores them as fat.
  - moby_click 10y ago
    Maybe we have differing ideas of "general" but in healthy non-overeating people, the fatty acid profile in the body is reasonably close to the dietary profile. There is some conversion like elongation and desaturation of essential fatty acids and you can also find some short-chain fatty acids from fermentation in the gut, but it takes excessive amounts of carbohydrates for de novo lipogenesis. Also, what else would the body do with dietary fat other than storing? A fatty meal would quickly overwhelm the capacity of the blood if there was no mechanism to quickly dispose of dietary fat.
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  > burning fat is inefficient Huh? The body is perfectly happy to burn fat. You just have to give it the right conditions. In fact, the body can get practically all its energy from fat, it's called ketosis. You can achieve a state of ketosis either through a high fat, low carb diet or fasting.
  - rjsamson 10y ago
    Yup. I've been doing a ketogenic diet the past 6 weeks and it's pretty awesome.
jasonjei 10y ago
Agreed. 500 calories from chicken or a lean protein like crab is very different from 500 calories from a pastry. What should be highlighted is amount of sugar and carbohydrates, not total calories. Not every calorie is created equally. In fact, you could almost remove carbohydrates from your diet and be unaffected, but the same isn't true of protein and good fats.
- snewk 10y ago
  i don't understand why your comment scores so low. It's pretty clear that our bodies will absorb 500 sugar/carbohydrate calories much more quickly than 500 protein/fat calories. You will get a much greater insulin response when eating a pastry than a chicken breast.
  - jasonjei 10y ago
    I suspect I'm being down voted because I said I don't believe carbohydrates are required for survival. While glucose is essential for life since the brain cells die quickly without it, glucose does not have to be obtained from carbohydrates. It can be obtained from protein or fat by breaking down the protein or fat into glucose. In fact, a good percentage of protein (~50%) becomes glucose when it enters the body. Protein is favored over many other energy forms since it contains amino acids, one of the most useful sources of nutrients to your body. Your body cannot store amino acids and yet it needs a daily intake of amino acids to survive. Additionally, protein conversion to fats is costly, so your body under normal conditions does not usually convert much of it, compared to fats and carbohydrates (carbs almost immediately undergo storage). Good fats, however, are beneficial (essential even for health) than carbohydrates in all cases. Or perhaps someone might enlighten me why I'm wrong (at the time of this writing, my original comment has 0 points of karma). I've cut bread and processed sugar to a large degree from my diet and stick to lean proteins like seafood and chicken, and have found myself to be quite lean and healthy (bulking even with my anterior/posterior chain, triceps/biceps). I haven't counted calories since I switched to a diet that focuses on lean protein and seafood (and I suspect there are days where I eat more than 2000 kCal).
    - 10y ago
spatular 10y ago
This isn't so. Quoting [1], energy dissipated as side-effect heat during gestation and storage: Carbohydrates: 5 to 15% of the energy consumed Protein: 20 to 35% Fats: at most 5 to 15% [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_dynamic_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_dynamic_action
- tezza 10y ago
  This adds to my point, it does not subtract to my point. Not only is the fat digestion process inefficient, but on top the fat absorbtion process consumes more energy to make happen ( that heat ) We'd have to see where in the large 5-15% ranges various items stand. Sugar dissolving in water... I'd be amazed if that released 15% of the energy. I'm still amazed it would be as high as 5%, so thanks for that info EDIT: spatular set me straight with a detailed process for sugar absorbtion
  - spatular 10y ago
    Well, fat digestion seems to be effective even comparing to hydrocarbons. I think longer hydrocarbons including sugar have to be broken into fructose and glucose during digestion. Fructose cannot be immidiately consumed by cells, so it's converted into glucose in liver. On top of that, there are about 5g of glucose total in bloodstream at any given moment, so exess have to be accumulated by liver/muscle cells that have to store it in a long-chain hydrocarbon form (glycogen). Each conversion requires some energy, so 5-15% isn't that much...
- nomel 10y ago
  > Protein: 20 to 35% Doesn't this assume that you're starving [1]? Proteins are a last resort, and since it's somewhat toxic to convert them, they're simply not processed if it can be avoided [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis "the process occurs during periods of fasting, starvation, low-carbohydrate diets, or intense exercise." [2] http://antranik.org/the-catabolism-of-fats-and-proteins-for-energy/ http://antranik.org/the-catabolism-of-fats-and-proteins-for-...
spoofball 10y ago
same thing is for protein present in grass but indigestible for humans. cows can extract "enormous" amounts of protein from foods that humans wouldn't ever. it's very hard measuring how much digestible protein something has, such as beans, or lentils, or soybeans. it depends if you eat the shell, did you blend the shell like a mad man, even if you blended beans into a homogenous phlegm
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Cows are not extracting protein from grass (well not much), they are converting the cellulose in the grass into microorganisms and then extracting the proteins from the microorganisms. The ruminant digestive system is an amazing system [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant
  - spoofball 10y ago
    You mean, microorganisms allow better deconstruction of cellulose which then frees the protein and makes it digestable? Yeah, ruminants are amazing with their cyclic puking and eating :)
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      Cows actually can't digest cellulose at all - what they can do is harbour the microorganisms that can. These microorganisms are then eaten by the cow and provide most of the protein in a cows diet.

by tezza 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

It's a well understood process: https://courses.washington.edu/conj/bess/fats/fats.html https://courses.washington.edu/conj/bess/fats/fats.html Also, you can experience what happens when you don't digest fat by eating a good bit of Olestra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects

snewk 10y ago
don't eat olestra
- goldenkey 10y ago
  Also dont eat fish oil capsules on an empty stomach. Your Herman Miller chair will receive a present that you could not help deliver. The oil will literally leak out since there is no other digested food to keep it behind your sphinter. One of the weirdest stenches of partially digested fish oil bile that resists all attempts to nuetralize the stain and odor. I am passing on great wisdom as funny and crude as it sounds..(That chair was eventually sold at a huge discount and was probably bleached. Steelcase Worklounge is better anyhow so I'm not totally out of shape about it.)

ysleepy 10y ago

The body is very efficient in storing fat, more than carbs or protein. But burning fat is inefficient. But this is just from the top of my head. I think its just a lot easier to eat a lot of carbs. Fats and protein make me much more saturated more quickly. I don't think there is some magic formula.

ljf 10y ago
Storing fat? ... You know have to burn the the fat to be able to store it? The fat doesn't have some other pathway from stomach to body fat - all the 'fat' you carry has been burned to get there. So whatever you have been overeating will be the cause.
nck4222 10y ago
In general your body doesn't take the fat you eat and store it as fat. It takes the excess sugars and stores them as fat.
- moby_click 10y ago
  Maybe we have differing ideas of "general" but in healthy non-overeating people, the fatty acid profile in the body is reasonably close to the dietary profile. There is some conversion like elongation and desaturation of essential fatty acids and you can also find some short-chain fatty acids from fermentation in the gut, but it takes excessive amounts of carbohydrates for de novo lipogenesis. Also, what else would the body do with dietary fat other than storing? A fatty meal would quickly overwhelm the capacity of the blood if there was no mechanism to quickly dispose of dietary fat.
rhinoceraptor 10y ago
> burning fat is inefficient Huh? The body is perfectly happy to burn fat. You just have to give it the right conditions. In fact, the body can get practically all its energy from fat, it's called ketosis. You can achieve a state of ketosis either through a high fat, low carb diet or fasting.
- rjsamson 10y ago
  Yup. I've been doing a ketogenic diet the past 6 weeks and it's pretty awesome.

jasonjei 10y ago

Agreed. 500 calories from chicken or a lean protein like crab is very different from 500 calories from a pastry. What should be highlighted is amount of sugar and carbohydrates, not total calories. Not every calorie is created equally. In fact, you could almost remove carbohydrates from your diet and be unaffected, but the same isn't true of protein and good fats.

snewk 10y ago
i don't understand why your comment scores so low. It's pretty clear that our bodies will absorb 500 sugar/carbohydrate calories much more quickly than 500 protein/fat calories. You will get a much greater insulin response when eating a pastry than a chicken breast.
- jasonjei 10y ago
  I suspect I'm being down voted because I said I don't believe carbohydrates are required for survival. While glucose is essential for life since the brain cells die quickly without it, glucose does not have to be obtained from carbohydrates. It can be obtained from protein or fat by breaking down the protein or fat into glucose. In fact, a good percentage of protein (~50%) becomes glucose when it enters the body. Protein is favored over many other energy forms since it contains amino acids, one of the most useful sources of nutrients to your body. Your body cannot store amino acids and yet it needs a daily intake of amino acids to survive. Additionally, protein conversion to fats is costly, so your body under normal conditions does not usually convert much of it, compared to fats and carbohydrates (carbs almost immediately undergo storage). Good fats, however, are beneficial (essential even for health) than carbohydrates in all cases. Or perhaps someone might enlighten me why I'm wrong (at the time of this writing, my original comment has 0 points of karma). I've cut bread and processed sugar to a large degree from my diet and stick to lean proteins like seafood and chicken, and have found myself to be quite lean and healthy (bulking even with my anterior/posterior chain, triceps/biceps). I haven't counted calories since I switched to a diet that focuses on lean protein and seafood (and I suspect there are days where I eat more than 2000 kCal).
  - 10y ago

spatular 10y ago

This isn't so. Quoting [1], energy dissipated as side-effect heat during gestation and storage: Carbohydrates: 5 to 15% of the energy consumed Protein: 20 to 35% Fats: at most 5 to 15% [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_dynamic_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_dynamic_action

tezza 10y ago
This adds to my point, it does not subtract to my point. Not only is the fat digestion process inefficient, but on top the fat absorbtion process consumes more energy to make happen ( that heat ) We'd have to see where in the large 5-15% ranges various items stand. Sugar dissolving in water... I'd be amazed if that released 15% of the energy. I'm still amazed it would be as high as 5%, so thanks for that info EDIT: spatular set me straight with a detailed process for sugar absorbtion
- spatular 10y ago
  Well, fat digestion seems to be effective even comparing to hydrocarbons. I think longer hydrocarbons including sugar have to be broken into fructose and glucose during digestion. Fructose cannot be immidiately consumed by cells, so it's converted into glucose in liver. On top of that, there are about 5g of glucose total in bloodstream at any given moment, so exess have to be accumulated by liver/muscle cells that have to store it in a long-chain hydrocarbon form (glycogen). Each conversion requires some energy, so 5-15% isn't that much...
nomel 10y ago
> Protein: 20 to 35% Doesn't this assume that you're starving [1]? Proteins are a last resort, and since it's somewhat toxic to convert them, they're simply not processed if it can be avoided [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis "the process occurs during periods of fasting, starvation, low-carbohydrate diets, or intense exercise." [2] http://antranik.org/the-catabolism-of-fats-and-proteins-for-energy/ http://antranik.org/the-catabolism-of-fats-and-proteins-for-...

spoofball 10y ago

same thing is for protein present in grass but indigestible for humans. cows can extract "enormous" amounts of protein from foods that humans wouldn't ever. it's very hard measuring how much digestible protein something has, such as beans, or lentils, or soybeans. it depends if you eat the shell, did you blend the shell like a mad man, even if you blended beans into a homogenous phlegm

danieltillett 10y ago
Cows are not extracting protein from grass (well not much), they are converting the cellulose in the grass into microorganisms and then extracting the proteins from the microorganisms. The ruminant digestive system is an amazing system [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant
- spoofball 10y ago
  You mean, microorganisms allow better deconstruction of cellulose which then frees the protein and makes it digestable? Yeah, ruminants are amazing with their cyclic puking and eating :)
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Cows actually can't digest cellulose at all - what they can do is harbour the microorganisms that can. These microorganisms are then eaten by the cow and provide most of the protein in a cows diet.