The NY Times just featured a look at 2000 calories in various forms (see it here) and it got me thinking about what exactly calories are and why we’re so obsessed with them.
Chemically speaking, a calorie is the energy required to raise the temperature of water 1 degree Celsius (it’s actually a kilocalorie, or Calorie, but food calories are commonly expressed with the lowercase “c” and so we’ll go with that generally accepted terminology here). Chemically speaking, all calories are the same: it requires X amount of calories to fuel a specific function. But food is not only calories. A 1/2 cup of beans has fiber, water, vitamins, minerals, complex carbohydrates, simple carbohydrates, proteins and probably other elements that we don’t understand completely yet. Most of those things are broken down into simple chemicals that our bodies use for energy. How that happens in our body varies from person to person. It even varies within individuals. Have you ever scarfed down a snack while driving from one thing to the next, sitting in traffic while listening to horns honk and watching the clock? Now think about eating that same exact snack relaxing with your best friend on a lazy summer Saturday afternoon. Think your body will break it down the same way? It doesn’t. Our hormones control metabolism and they are very sensitive to outside conditions.
Anyway, taking out hormones for the moment (I promise if you follow this blog, you will hear much more about hormones and metabolism!), let’s go back to those beans. Let’s say a serving of beans is about 100 calories. Four standard size marshmallows are about 90 calories. The marshmallows have a little water and lots of simple sugars. That’s about it. Think your body uses the 100 calories from the beans and the 90 calories from the marshmallow the same way? It doesn’t! The beans are providing us nutrients. The marshmallows, well, not so much.
So, if you’re watching your weight and counting calories, you can absolutely eat those marshmallows and stay within your calorie count. And you probably should once in a while: they can be delicious and help bring sweetness to your life. But they won’t satisfy a true hunger and they won’t fuel your body in any meaningful way. The beans, however, will absolutely fuel you.