Posts filed under ‘Food Choices’
Isocaloric but Very Different
“It’s all about calories.” It’s a widely held belief, and as I discussed in my two part series on thermodynamics (1, 2), it’s really hard to measure all those calories and that “calories in vs. calories out” says nothing about where food is stored or used.
Unfortunately, most people don’t care to think about the issue in depth. So here’s a nice easy one.
Let’s take a look at two isocaloric diets: Diet #1 is 2.5cups of table sugar per day, and Diet #2 is 4.5lbs of chicken breast. Both diets come in at 2000 cals/day.
2 comments May 11, 2011
Low-Meat Paleo
Like many of my posts, this one starts with a conversation at a party. Last weekend, a friend of a friend expressed her interest in a paleo/primal diet over a red cup of “jungle juice” (don’t fret – I avoided the syrupy substance).
Here’s the catch: She’s not a fan of meat.
According to her, this abstinence is neither ethical nor nutritional, she is just “grossed out by the texture.” At least that was what I took from our conversation. It doesn’t really matter why she wants to be flesh-free, the question is the same: How should I eat paleo without meat? Is it even worth it?
It is worth it. Read on for more about why and how.
2 comments May 9, 2011
Do Calories Count? 1st Law of Thermo (Part 2)
Despite breaking this post up into two parts (part 1 here), this one is still a little long. Push through to the end, and you won’t be disappointed.
Last time we talked about the issues involved with applying the First Law of Thermodynamics to the entire human body as a control volume. Go back and read that post, especially the “Summing Up†paragraph at the bottom.
All caught up to speed? Good, let’s get going.
9 comments April 28, 2011
Do Calories Count? 1st Law of Thermo (Part 1)
This is a two-parter. Part 2 is here.
Calories are a contentious subject in the fitness and nutrition community, especially around these parts. The whole foods corner stresses that food quality is more important than quantity, and the low-carbers place the emphasis on hormonal balance; both of these stances can be extorted with little effort into the definitive “calories don’t count.â€
I must say, this calorie apathy is extremely tempting to buy into, but I can’t quite get myself to embrace it completely. On one hand, I know our hunter/gatherer ancestors’ dinner didn’t make a stop on the scale between beast and belly, and they did just fine. There absolutely must have been times of excess (I’d venture to guess some lived their whole lives in times of proverbial “feastâ€), so I don’t buy the claim that they stayed healthy due to lack of food availability. This is why I believe that staying healthy and lean should be relatively effortless – and certainly should not require scales or measuring cups.
1 comment April 26, 2011
Manic Monday: French Fry Follies
It is 1949, and McDonald’s has just added french fries to the menu at their only location. This delicious side dish was simply potatoes cut into strips and fried in beef tallow. Those were the days…
Fast forward to 1990, when the artery-clogging combo of Ancel Keys and George McGovern have created a culture unfriendly to familiar fats we fancied – the saturated variety. With their irresponsible application of flawed logic they convinced Americans that McDonald’s should ditch the animal fats in their fryers in favor of industrial seed oils, ensuring that American health would continue to decline significantly for the next 40 years. Oops.
1 comment April 25, 2011
What’s Being Said