Rethinking calories
“How many calories does this contain?”
Every day, the question crops up at dinner tables and grocery stores. It seems I can scarcely put food in my mouth without someone scanning the label for the calorie count.
We live in a calorie-obsessed nation, where even children are taught to fear calories as the agents of obesity.
A friend and dietician told me about her experience teaching nutrition to 5th graders. She said, “Most of the kids thought calories were something bad. I had to explain that calories were a way of measuring the energy needed to make their bodies function properly.”
She raises an excellent point. Rather than thinking all calories are “bad” or something to avoid, we have to understand the nutritional value behind the calories we consume.
Consider a Twinkie® and a health bar made with oatmeal and pieces of dried fruit. The two foods could contain the same number of calories, but their nutritional values are drastically different.
The supposedly simple strategy of losing weight – eat less and exercise more – turns troublesome when we automatically assume all low-calorie foods are good for us.
I remember my friend Susan carefully monitoring her weight, and counting every calorie she put in her mouth. During one of our morning walks, she proudly explained that she had eaten a bagel for breakfast that contained only 150 calories.
What Susan didn’t consider was that her 150-calorie bagel contained a tremendous amount of trans fats. Studies now suggest that a person who consumes a lot of calories from trans fats may be more likely to gain weight compared to those who consume the same amount of calories from other types of fats, carbohydrates or proteins.
To start solving the obesity epidemic, we have to ask the right questions: not only how many calories, but what’s in those calories?
Next time you head to the grocery store and see a package advertising 100-calorie cookies, turn over the label and look at the ingredients. If you read trans fats, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, or high fructose corn syrup on the list, drop it like a hot pan – no matter how few calories it contains.