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CICO is not exactly true. Not all calories are equal. Fat calories, for example, are much less absorbed by the body than carbohydrates.

by Faaak 9y ago

garrettdc 9y ago
It does a good enough job at modeling reality that we can make decent predictions with it. While the details of CICO may be more complicated, for someone who is obviously out of shape, the advice of "Eat some extra protein and make sure you are consuming below maintenance calories" works 9/10 times.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Which is why Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig have never changed their formulas, always works for everyone, never have repeat customers, and are nearly broke charities, right?~
  - tacon 9y ago
    Those companies are a nicely disguised cover to maintain one's status quo. An online marketer once pointed out a Jenny Craig(?) advertisement: "Eat all the food you want!" Busted.
Andre_Wanglin 9y ago
It's still CICO. It's just that the way we currently measure the caloric content of a food does not represent what is actually bioavailable.
- laretluval 9y ago
  So it’s CICO for some unobservable quantity of calories. Real useful.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    It's really useful if you don't change your diet, but eat less of the same stuff as before.
    - laretluval 9y ago
      Not necessarily. Bioavailable calories may not be a linear function of calories consumed. CICO is empirically vacuous.
azemetre 9y ago
You're talking about calorie differentials amounting to 40 or 80 per day. Hardly something worth considering for the average person, but I'm sure it gives you easy grant money to chug out reports. If you think obesity is due to the difference between 80 calories or so, you have other drastic immediate concerns (the terrible mental model being one). People aren't becoming obese because their body isn't "processing" fat calories compared to carb calories, they are obese because people eat obscene amounts of food daily. Countries like France and Italy eat massive amounts of carbs in their diets and they don't have obesity issues on the scale of the United States.
rimliu 9y ago
Calories that not abosorbed are calories-through, not calories -in.

CICO is not exactly true. Not all calories are equal. Fat calories, for example, are much less absorbed by the body than carbohydrates.

by Faaak 9y ago

CICO is not exactly true. Not all calories are equal. Fat calories, for example, are much less absorbed by the body than carbohydrates.

garrettdc 9y ago

It does a good enough job at modeling reality that we can make decent predictions with it. While the details of CICO may be more complicated, for someone who is obviously out of shape, the advice of "Eat some extra protein and make sure you are consuming below maintenance calories" works 9/10 times.

WorldMaker 9y ago
Which is why Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig have never changed their formulas, always works for everyone, never have repeat customers, and are nearly broke charities, right?~
- tacon 9y ago
  Those companies are a nicely disguised cover to maintain one's status quo. An online marketer once pointed out a Jenny Craig(?) advertisement: "Eat all the food you want!" Busted.

Andre_Wanglin 9y ago

It's still CICO. It's just that the way we currently measure the caloric content of a food does not represent what is actually bioavailable.

laretluval 9y ago
So it’s CICO for some unobservable quantity of calories. Real useful.
- adrianN 9y ago
  It's really useful if you don't change your diet, but eat less of the same stuff as before.
  - laretluval 9y ago
    Not necessarily. Bioavailable calories may not be a linear function of calories consumed. CICO is empirically vacuous.

azemetre 9y ago

You're talking about calorie differentials amounting to 40 or 80 per day. Hardly something worth considering for the average person, but I'm sure it gives you easy grant money to chug out reports. If you think obesity is due to the difference between 80 calories or so, you have other drastic immediate concerns (the terrible mental model being one). People aren't becoming obese because their body isn't "processing" fat calories compared to carb calories, they are obese because people eat obscene amounts of food daily. Countries like France and Italy eat massive amounts of carbs in their diets and they don't have obesity issues on the scale of the United States.

rimliu 9y ago

Calories that not abosorbed are calories-through, not calories -in.