Calories

What are Calories? How to Diet and How to Lose Weight by Counting Calories? How to make a lose weight diet plan by counting total Calories? What are the best foods for us to live longer?

We hope to answer these and other basic questions about food here.

The major nutrients essential for human beings are proteins, carbohydrates, fats and oils, minerals, vitamins, and water. Healthy diets should include a wide variety of foods to include all these necessary nutrients. Eat what you like, but in moderation. Many experiments done throughout the world with animals, and to a limited extent with humans indicate that a calorie restricted diet extends life span. Calorie Restriction Diet does not mean that we have to go hungry; it means that we should eat less of the high calorie foods and eat more of the low calorie foods. So we must know which foods contain more calories and which less.

What is a Calorie

A calorie is the amount of energy or heat required to increase the temperature of one gram of water to one degree C (C=Celsius or Centigrade =1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Simply put, the calorie of a food is the amount of heat it will give out if it is burnt. The amount of heat in one gram of the food by burning is measured in an instrument called a Calorimeter. The Calorimeter measures the total heat in calories available in a food. But when we eat the food, we need to digest it, and process of digestion requires some energy.

The Metabolizable Energy Intake (MEI) or the actual energy obtained by the body is calculated by reducing the energy used by the body to digest the food. It is usual to assume that 15% of the total calorie value of a food is used for digestion. So when we use Food Calories, it is the value obtained by multiplying the total amount of energy in the food by 85% or 0.85.

Food Calories are usually expressed in Kilo-Calories (thousand calories) per gram of the food item.  The Calorific Value of Fats and oils are at the top at 9000 Calories per gram or 9 Kilo Calories per gram abbreviated as 9Kcal/gm. Alcohol comes next with 7Kcal/gm (you have to take the actual alcohol content in the drink – straight Whiskey is about 40% alcohol and beer about 5% alcohol), Proteins and Carbohydrate is at 4Kcals/gm (actual protein and starch content in foods, for example whole meal flour has fiber content which does not have a Calorie value and hence the fiber weight has to be reduced)

Before we get into the calorific values of common foods and how to calculate our daily intake of calories, let us discuss about some interesting aspects of food.

Food with Negative Calories

We said above that food need energy to be digested and that it is usual to deduct 15% of the total Calorific Value of a food to obtain the MEI or Metabolizable Energy Intake. Food with Negative Calories require more energy to digest than its calorific value. Is this a myth or Do negative calorie foods exist?

This intriguing question is the holy grail of dieters worldwide. As of now, Celery is considered the king of negative foods. This is because celery contains a lot of cellulose. Cellulose is a complex carbohydrate which cannot be digested by human beings, but is not harmful to us. So our bodies are supposed to spend more energy trying to digest celery than we get out of it. But hard scientific evidence proves that it is not the case. In common with all other leafy vegetables, celery is high in fibers and cellulose, and contributes energy to our body, but only a very small amount considering the amount eaten.

Hard Boiled Eggs to Lose Weight

Hard boiled eggs for healthy weight loss diet is not something new. Many know that hard boiled eggs have a lot of protiens which when boiled requires more energy from your body to digest the hard boiled egg than the energy in the egg. So hard boiled eggs are negative calorie food. Hard boiled eggs are also very nutritious with plenty of protiens and other essential nutrients and so helps in leading to a healthy weight loss diet.

Fruits with Negative Calories

Negative calorie Fruits and Vegetables are apple, grapefruit, lemon, lime, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, etc. These may not theoretically be negative calorie, but they have so few calories and will satisfy ones hunger.

Someday soon, Kellogg and other food manufacturers may come up with tasty foods, full of stomach filling and harmless cellulose and fibers, but with no calories. May be there are regulations banning the production of such foods, otherwise these food manufacturers would have flooded the market with such products, and the world would have been full of skinny model like people.

Calorie Restriction Diet

From the 1930s, scientific research has shown that a Calorie Restriction Diet makes living things like worms, spiders, rats, dogs, cows and monkeys live longer and also makes them much healthier and fit. Calorie Restriction Diet does not mean that we have to go hungry; it means that we should eat less of the high calorie foods and eat more of the low calorie foods. Humans on Calorie Restriction Diet become much healthier with lower cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc.  Strangely enough in some of these human voluntary trials it was shown that the Memory functions of the older subjects were also improved. The calorie restricted diet consisted of approximately 1,500 to 2,000 calories per day, against a normal diet of 2500 to 3500 calories a day.

It is best to eat a mixed variety of foods in our daily diets. Target is to limit the total daily intake of calories to less than 2000 calories. To give an idea of how to select a mixed diet, common foods are divided into 5 groups below, with their calorie values. Plan a daily diet consisting of foods from each group and calculate the total calories. You need not follow this to the letter, but use it as a guide line. Our target is to enjoy life and at the same time to keep fit.