# Is a calorie a calorie which is a calorie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 9, 2015, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620 "2015-03-09T18:16:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2015, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/21 "2015-03-09T23:42:19Z")
> [@JerrySTL](#): > > The calorie content in food is measure by burning the food in a controlled oven then measuring how much extra energy is produced. This isn’t true. The calorie count given on food labels and the like are the results of an equation that takes into accounts how efficiently the various constituents of the food are metabolized. Its a somewhat crude calculation, but its generally accurate to within a few percent. They don’t just blindly list the results of burning the food in a calorimeter. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/22 "2015-03-10T00:08:50Z")
> [@JerrySTL](#): > > Also how a food is prepared can make a difference. A raw potato has little in the way of calories.\*\* However if you bake the potato, the calorie content goes way up. \*\*The same goes for many other vegetables and, to a lessor extent, meats. How could this possibly be true? What form would the additional calories take? And where would they come from? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/23 "2015-03-10T00:12:53Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > … The calorie count given on food labels and the like are the results of an equation that takes into accounts how efficiently the various constituents of the food are metabolized. … Cite? Indeed bomb calorimeter is no longer used, but the Atwater system ([which is](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/)) doe NOT take into account how efficiently the constituents are metabolized and is [notoriously inaccurate](http://www.livescience.com/26799-calorie-counts-inaccurate.html). Not that the difference makes much of difference in the real world in which satiety of foods plays a bigger factor (intake is rarely “one serving size”). **Ambi** the calories absorbed by the body, the\* effective\* calories, goes way up. Uncooked potato starch is poorly absorbed by the body and will pass through, some digested for you by your gut bacteria with lots of gas and gas pains as a result, more just going out in the poop. Cooked potato has calories that the body actually absorbs. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/24 "2015-03-10T00:21:35Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Cite? > > Indeed bomb calorimeter is no longer used, but the Atwater system ([which is](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/)) doe NOT take into account how efficiently the constituents are metabolized and is [notoriously inaccurate](http://www.livescience.com/26799-calorie-counts-inaccurate.html). > > Not that the difference makes much of difference in the real world in which satiety of foods plays a bigger factor (intake is rarely “one serving size”). > > **Ambi** the calories absorbed by the body, the\* effective\* calories, goes way up. Uncooked potato starch is poorly absorbed by the body and will pass through, some digested for you by your gut bacteria with lots of gas and gas pains as a result, more just going out in the poop. Cooked potato has calories that the body actually absorbs. Ahhh, I see. Yes, that makes sense. _Absorbed_ vs _unabsorbed_ is one thing. But a damn potato has the same number of calories no matter how hot you get it. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/25 "2015-03-10T14:41:40Z")
> [@Cartoonacy](#): > > But gluten \*is \*protein. I can see cutting down on carbs, but I don’t see any advantage to switching to gluten-free products (unless you have an allergy or celiac disease). I’d think it would be a drawback, since gluten-free products contain no protein, and therefore a higher percentage of carbs. You misunderstood me. I didn’t switch to gluten-free products. They are highly processed and I avoid processed foods. My dietary change was simply to avoid carbs and glutens as much as possible. So for example, where I used to make myself a sandwich for lunch every day, now I slap some lunch meat and sliced cheese directly on a plate, wave it under the broiler just to warm up the cheese, and snarf it down with a knife and fork. (Yes, the lunch meat is also highly processed, that’s one of my exceptions. So far I haven’t figured out any other good meat/fat to eat for lunch short of steak/pork/chicken which I don’t have time for.) I do think there is something allergenic there for me, too. Before the diet I was having near-constant acid reflux and burping. Whether my stomach was empty or full, it was generating a ton of gas. I didn’t know what was causing it. After starting the diet, that’s disappeared except when I do have the occasional few bites of bread. ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/26 "2015-03-10T14:42:57Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Y’ever look at your poop after a particularly good salad? There’s so much…stuff in there. Recognizable stuff, like leaves of lettuce and bits of carrot and corn. Beg to differ, but I don’t have this, and never have. I think you need to chew your food better. ---
**Author:** ![Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fool_in_the_Rain)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/27 "2015-03-10T15:45:27Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > How could this possibly be true? What form would the additional calories take? And where would they come from? [QUOTE=Richard Wrangham] Yet there were signs that cooking did affect the calorie counts of some foods. Starches, for instance, like those in wheat, barley, potatoes, and so on, are composed mostly of two sugar-based molecules, amylopectin and amylose, which, when raw, are tightly packed and inaccessible to digestive enzymes. Studies have found that cooking gelatinizes starch, which means that amylopectin and amylose are released and exposed to enzymes. Thus, cooked starches yield more energy than raw ones. [/QUOTE] From here: [Discovery Magazine](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/08/why-calorie-counts-are-wrong-cooked-food-provides-a-lot-more-energy/) interesting hijack He tried a chimpanzee diet to compare to how our ancestors may have lived, and found how unpalatable it was, and surmises cooking may have been one the reasons humans survived. > [@](#): > > When I was studying the feeding behavior of wild chimpanzees in the early 1970s, I tried surviving on chimpanzee foods for a day at a time. I learned that nothing that chimpanzees ate (at Gombe, in Tanzania, at least) was so poisonous that it would make you ill, but nothing was so palatable that one could easily fill one’s stomach. Having eaten nothing but chimpanzee foods all day, I fell upon regular cooked food in the evenings with relief and delight. > > About 25 years later, it occurred to me that my experience in Gombe of being unable to thrive on wild foods likely reflected a general problem for humans that was somehow overcome at some point, possibly through the development of cooking. (Various of our ancestors would have eaten more roots and meat than chimpanzees do, but I had plenty of experience of seeing chimpanzees working very hard to chew their way through tough raw meat—and had even myself tried chewing monkeys killed and discarded by chimpanzees.) In 1999, I published a paper [pdf] with colleagues that argued that the advent of cooking would have marked a turning point in how much energy our ancestors were able to reap from food. /hijack ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/28 "2015-03-10T19:44:59Z")
Wood is pretty high in calories, but your body can’t digest it. If you just eat sawdust you will starve to death. “A calorie is a calorie” is true by the definition of what a calorie is. One calorie of wood contains the same amount of energy as one calorie of soda. However, your body can easily extract the calorie from the soda, but can’t extract the calorie from wood. Some foods are easily and pretty thoroughly converted to energy or fat by your body. Others are only partially convertible, and others require your body to expend energy in order to convert them to energy. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/29 "2015-03-10T19:49:13Z")
Credible scientists don’t yet know. There’s a [massive study](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/what-makes-us-fat/) going on right now, spending millions of dollars, to get to the bottom of this right now. Apparently there is currently research pointing in both directions at the present time. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/30 "2015-03-10T19:56:05Z")
OMG! **Scylla** is back! ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/31 "2015-03-10T20:00:59Z")
> [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](#): > > From here: [Discovery Magazine](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/08/why-calorie-counts-are-wrong-cooked-food-provides-a-lot-more-energy/) > > interesting hijack > He tried a chimpanzee diet to compare to how our ancestors may have lived, and found how unpalatable it was, and surmises cooking may have been one the reasons humans survived. > > /hijack It’s a really fascinating hijack. Compare his experience to that of animals. Ruminants have evolved specialized digestive systems to be able to break down all the cellulose they eat. Pat of the process is chewing, swallowing and then regurgitating and chewing some more. Carnivores don’t chew their food but just shear off chunks and swallow it and let their stomach acids take care of the rest. But they too, have specialized for that. We are clearly not specialized for any particular diet since we’re omnivores. But cooking the food absolutely makes it easier for us to digest. I think the question is if we never specialized because we invented cooking, or if we invented cooking because we never specialized (and thus sucked at eating well enough to survive as a species)? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/32 "2015-03-10T20:13:51Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > Beg to differ, but I don’t have this, and never have. I think you need to chew your food better. I’m not basing it on my feces alone. I look at poop for a living. 😛 > [@friedo](#): > > OMG! **Scylla** is back! He’s full of fiber. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/33 "2015-03-10T21:01:30Z")
> [@sweeteviljesus](#): > > she claimed that there was something special about the sugar, stating that “a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie”. The Alice B. Toklas Diet, I assume? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/34 "2015-03-11T05:09:06Z")
> [@sweeteviljesus](#): > > So we excrete many of the calories in non-sweet foods? What percentages? > > Thanks, > Rob nit pick: Um, actually I know that some of the unused calories are used by gut flora, and not all of the calories used by gut flora are absorbed by your body. So it could be kind of misleading to say that we “excrete” all the calories we don’t metabolise. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/35 "2015-03-11T11:30:13Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I’m not basing it on my feces alone. I look at poop for a living. 😛 Nice job if you can get it. 🙂 Actually I find it surprising that after eating tons of vegetables (cooked, but still firm enough to require a decent amount of chewing), nothing resembling a vegetable comes out the other end later. Our stomach and intestines (well, mine at least) must be able to break that stuff down pretty effectively. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/36 "2015-03-11T14:18:42Z")
Counterpoint: [Eating junk food and losing weight is possible, proves science teacher](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/2507/20140108/eating-junk-food-losing-weight-possible-proves-science-teacher.htm). He ate at McDonald’s for every meal (not just the salads, either), limiting himself to 2,000 calories per day, and lost 37 pounds in 90 days. [Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds](http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/). Nutrition professor ate convenience-store junk food almost exclusively, watching his total calories, and lost 27 pounds in two months. I’m not saying that calories are all that matters in total health, there’s a lot more to it than that. I will say that it doesn’t seem to matter much where the calories come from, as long as your nutritional needs are otherwise met. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/37 "2015-03-11T14:37:52Z")
A gallon of gasoline is a gallon of gasoline. Therefore, all cars will travel the same distance on one gallon of gasoline. Or maybe not, but surely it must be true for calories. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/38 "2015-03-11T14:45:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > A gallon of gasoline is a gallon of gasoline. Therefore, all cars will travel the same distance on one gallon of gasoline. Or maybe not, but surely it must be true for calories. Consider this a Like. Well stated. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/39 "2015-03-11T17:10:20Z")
When you consider a thing like flour, the seeds have been pre-chewed for us by the mill, so a great deal of the energy needed to eat the food, and the greatly expanded net surface area, make it that much easier for us to get the calories out. Seeds are typically constructed to have as good a chance as they can to get through the digestive tract intact, so that they will land in a nice pile of fertilizer. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620/40 "2015-03-11T21:58:28Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > Counterpoint: [Eating junk food and losing weight is possible, proves science teacher](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/2507/20140108/eating-junk-food-losing-weight-possible-proves-science-teacher.htm). He ate at McDonald’s for every meal (not just the salads, either), limiting himself to 2,000 calories per day, and lost 37 pounds in 90 days. > > [Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds](http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/). Nutrition professor ate convenience-store junk food almost exclusively, watching his total calories, and lost 27 pounds in two months. > > I’m not saying that calories are all that matters in total health, there’s a lot more to it than that. I will say that it doesn’t seem to matter much where the calories come from, as long as your nutritional needs are otherwise met. Not sure what you point you believe those two anecdotes (including the nutrition professor who also did protein and vitamin supplements) are counterpoint to. Yes and individual can eat little enough calories of junkfood to lose weight, and some people are disciplined enough that despite those foods having low satiety they can stick with it for two or three months measuring carefully. Such is not all in conflict with the fact that how many calories is little enough depends of course on how many you burn and the same number of listed calories of highly processed food is effectively more calories than the same number of calories of less highly processed foods and satisfies hunger less. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-calorie-a-calorie-which-is-a-calorie/714620.md?page=3)