There Is No Need to Argue About Calories and Nutritional Value: Both Meanings Matter.
In a world where people sell the oil in their coffee as a weight loss and mental enhancement elixir, we hear a similar clamor from people claiming that the nutritional quality and “integrity” of food matters much more than its calories, while others refer to the body as a calorimeter and focus solely on numbers. So who’s right? Actually, both.
Obesity expert Dr. Yoni Friedhoff of the University of Ottawa and Weighty Matters advocates the importance of both food quality and calories, noting:
… that we still need a surplus of calories to gain and a deficit to lose.
But food matters too. Food choices matter in terms of health, but also in terms of how many calories our bodies use to digest, and more importantly, satiety, which in turn has a noticeable effect on how many calories and which ones. we choose products for consumption. …
In other words, your ideal diet should focus on both, and they work in tandem to enhance your health and your weight loss efforts.
Sure, there are stories of people who ate nothing but pizza or chicken nuggets for decades and looked healthy and were of normal weight, but don’t let strangers throw your common sense out the window. Plus, food is healthy and good for you outside of the biological context of recruiting or losing weight.
Navigate to the “Good Questions” link below to learn more about Dr. Friedhoff’s sound advice and thoughts on current health and medical industry discussions.
The False Dichotomy of Food | Important questions