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The debate around "A calorie is a calorie" relates to the whole "calories in vs calories out" concept for weight loss/gain. Examples like yours focus heavily o

The debate around "A calorie is a calorie" relates to the whole "calories in vs calories out" concept for weight loss/gain. Examples like yours focus heavily on the "calories in", but forget to consider the "calories out" aspect. What I mean there is, when someone says that the body processes different macronutriets differently, a lot of that has to do with how it affects "calories out" If you eat 500 calories of a food that your body will only process a small amount of, and expel the other 450 calories as waste, that 450 is part of the "calories out". That's only a net "calories in" of 50. On the other hand, if you eat 500 calories of a food that your body chooses to process/store most of, that's 400 calories in, and only 100 calories out. The calories out part of the equation isn't just the energy you expend per day through movement/metabolic processes/etc, it's also the calories that are expelled as waste because the body didn't store that macronutrient.

josephcsible 5y ago
> If you eat 500 calories of a food that your body will only process a small amount of, and expel the other 450 calories as waste Does this much lack of absorption ever actually happen, though, outside of exceptional cases like if you get food poisoning?
- KoftaBob 5y ago
  I used an exaggerated ratio to drive the point home. To clarify, I'm not talking as much about absorption, more-so about things like how a macronutrient affects insulin sensitivity. Carbohydrates decrease insulin sensitivity more than protein and unsaturated fats would. Decreased insulin sensitivity means increased insulin resistance. "Having insulin resistance means that the walls of the cells within the body that need to take in glucose for energy, have a much-lowered sensitivity to insulin. This makes it harder for the cells to receive the necessary glucose through the cell wall. That glucose then remains in the bloodstream, resulting in high blood sugar levels, which the liver then has to manage. When this excess sugar reaches the liver, it is converted to fat. The fat cells leave the liver via the bloodstream and cause weight gain. If left unmanaged this can lead to obesity."
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    It is shocking to me how few people are aware of this. I read Good Calories, Bad Calories almost 15 years ago and the idea that macronutrients have a meta-metabolic effect (i.e. on insulin sensitivity) now seems so trivially obvious that you wonder how it was ignored for so long. And yet people are still repeating the CICO mantra as though we are still in the dark ages.
  - maccard 5y ago
    But the amount matters in your exaggerated ratio and far less in real life. Can you share a source on how much is actually burned with some foods? Because if you're burning 30 calories digesting a 1000 calorie meal, then just eating 2 less fries with your Big Mac meal will be a better use of your time.

josephcsible 5y ago

> If you eat 500 calories of a food that your body will only process a small amount of, and expel the other 450 calories as waste Does this much lack of absorption ever actually happen, though, outside of exceptional cases like if you get food poisoning?

KoftaBob 5y ago
I used an exaggerated ratio to drive the point home. To clarify, I'm not talking as much about absorption, more-so about things like how a macronutrient affects insulin sensitivity. Carbohydrates decrease insulin sensitivity more than protein and unsaturated fats would. Decreased insulin sensitivity means increased insulin resistance. "Having insulin resistance means that the walls of the cells within the body that need to take in glucose for energy, have a much-lowered sensitivity to insulin. This makes it harder for the cells to receive the necessary glucose through the cell wall. That glucose then remains in the bloodstream, resulting in high blood sugar levels, which the liver then has to manage. When this excess sugar reaches the liver, it is converted to fat. The fat cells leave the liver via the bloodstream and cause weight gain. If left unmanaged this can lead to obesity."
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  It is shocking to me how few people are aware of this. I read Good Calories, Bad Calories almost 15 years ago and the idea that macronutrients have a meta-metabolic effect (i.e. on insulin sensitivity) now seems so trivially obvious that you wonder how it was ignored for so long. And yet people are still repeating the CICO mantra as though we are still in the dark ages.
- maccard 5y ago
  But the amount matters in your exaggerated ratio and far less in real life. Can you share a source on how much is actually burned with some foods? Because if you're burning 30 calories digesting a 1000 calorie meal, then just eating 2 less fries with your Big Mac meal will be a better use of your time.