Are all calories equal?
Wednesday, November 19th, 2014 | Fatty Acids, FIber, LDL, Nutritioin, Omega -3 Fatty Acids | No Comments
Whether we’re trying to lose weight or just want to eat healthy, most of us use counting calories as a way to judge whether we’re eating the right amount of food. (The prevailing goal of 2,000 calories a day came from the FDA starting in the 1990s; it’s the basis of all nutritional information printed on food packaging.)
But is that the only way we should measure our food intake? Are all calories equal?
Alyssa Cellini, a nutritionist with ProCare Physical Therapy (a Physiquality clinic in New Jersey), says absolutely not! She compares your digestive system to the gas tank in your car, something that can only hold so much at one time.
But the difference between the gas in your tank and the food in your belly is that you can’t see a measurement of how full your tank is, and it’s difficult to measure how much you’re consuming. (Yes, we know that we’re eating an apple, but how many calories is that?) In addition, she says, different foods fill up the tank differently, so equal amounts of different foods don’t necessarily fill us up the same way. Read More
