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>If you could manage to consume 2,000 kcal of lettuce in a day, you will almost certainly gain less weight (or lose more weight) than if you consumed only 1,500
by parliament32 9y ago
>If you could manage to consume 2,000 kcal of lettuce in a day, you will almost certainly gain less weight (or lose more weight) than if you consumed only 1,500 kcal of modern processed American bread.
No you wouldn't. That's not how energy works.
If you take two people with identical amounts of energy expenditure, then feed one 2000 kcal of lettuce and the other 2000 kcal of wonderbread, they would gain/lose weight at an identical pace. Energy is energy and all the hand waving in the world can't change that.
Of course both would eventually die of malnutrition and they could certainly have different levels of satiation... but if we're just talking about "weight loss", like the article says, a calorie is a calorie, period.
- blunte 9y agoNope. Your body will do a lot of different things with different inputs. You're only looking at half of the equation - the input. Look also at the output. If you're eating a lot of fiber and water, such as with lettuce, your "output" will be higher (bathroom). With white bread, more of what goes in will stay in. That's an oversimplification, but it's just one example that calories are not all the same. And for a more interesting example, the studies of fasting have demonstrated that caloric reduction (not complete fasting) will result in more muscle loss as your body is eating its own muscle to operate. But with a few days of total fasting, no calories, you will burn fat to survive. People on a restricted calorie test will lose more weight than people consuming zero calories - at least for a few days.