Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong

Re:Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong by iopq on Monday August 17, 2015 @11:51AM (#10073797)

> Proteins may require as much as five times more energy to digest as fats because our enzymes must unravel the tightly wound strings of amino acids from which proteins are built. Yet food labels do not account for this expenditure.

That's not quite true. Protein has 5 calories per gram, but labels only count 4 because of this fact.

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Re:Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong by wdewind on Monday August 17, 2015 @12:02PM (#10073912)

> That's not quite true. Protein has 5 calories per gram, but labels only count 4 because of this fact.

Can you give me more information about this? I've always wondered whether or not calories listed are "net" calories (as in the number of calories you get after you extract calories from the food) or "total" (as in this amount minus the amount it takes to extract these calories). I'm just not sure what to google to read more :)

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Re:Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong by iopq on Monday August 17, 2015 @12:14PM (#10074013)

I found a Wikipedia article with the actual amounts from combustion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system

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Re:Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong by wdewind on Monday August 17, 2015 @12:32PM (#10074178)

Cool, I'll take a look, thanks

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