> Grain is very caloric. That's kind of a misleading sentence. Fat is about 9 kcal per g. Carbohydrates and proteins are about 4 kcal per g (it's slightly mo

> Grain is very caloric. That's kind of a misleading sentence. Fat is about 9 kcal per g. Carbohydrates and proteins are about 4 kcal per g (it's slightly more complicated than that because proteins have slightly higher caloric content, but take energy to absorb, while larger carbohydrates are can not be absorbed at all, but let's just take these as rough values). Grain isn't very "caloric" at all compared to, say, butter. 10g of white flour is 36 kcal, while 10g of butter is 72 kcal. Compared to lettuce it's quite "caloric". 10g of lettuce gives you only 2 kcal. But that's because lettuce is all water. Although I really like eating grains, I'm also a pretty big fan of vegetables. If you imagine that a meal is about 600 kcal (give or take), I think it's instructive to assemble a variety of food and see what quantity of food that is. 3/4 of a stick of butter; or half a loaf of bread (assuming a 1 lb loaf); or 6 large heads of iceberg lettuce. You can see pretty easily that if you want to eat more food, while maintaining the same caloric intake, then vegetables are the way to go -- because they have a lot of water. But you can also have soups, etc to get the same effect. Even grains work well: a bowl of porridge made with 250 ml of semi skimmed milk is only 254 kcal according to google -- but that tablespoon of brown sugar is going to bump it up to over 300 kcal. So that's really the thing: if you remove water from stuff (flour, sugar, oil, butter) it's pretty calorie dense -- especially oils and fats. Eating things that are essentially dried out conglomerations of these things (potato chips, cookies, muffins, cheese, granola, etc, etc) means that you can only eat a ridiculously small amount of food if you are trying to hit a calorie target. Virtually all of our "convenience foods" fall into that category -- even sandwiches are often bread, meat, mayonnaise and a token slice of greenery. The secret is to cook so as to maintain flavour while keeping the water content up (or to enjoy eating more intense foods, with much smaller portions).