Calories on a menu

Dr.MickKiller

bluewolf wrote: »

I can't find where it was
It MAY have been the "all day eggworks" bagel
so
http://www.obriens.ie/pdf/obriens-calorie-counter.pdf
bagel 260
egg 120
dairy spread? 54
sausage 269
bacon 61
cheese 159

so that's 923 and im sure there's more i forgot

The triple decker is 1,178 but I don't think they do them anymore.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/o-briens-sandwich-bar-chicken-bacon-triple-decker-on-brown-bread-4864893

Son Of A Vidic

mariaalice wrote: »

Would calories on a menu make you change your choices.

Nope and as my late Father used to say, "There's only one way you can die, so you might as well die happy." He was 87 when he passed , not a bad innings for a man who really enjoyed life and lived it to the full.

robinph

barry181091 wrote: »

I would argue it is of great use. Its a unit of energy. A person knows not to exceed roughly X amount per day. So these quick units are a good guide for them.

Fine, might they might not be getting Xg of protein but at least they can be sure they won't be gaining 2 stone in the next month anyway :rolleyes:

Obviously totally no use to athletes or people in specific training or who have specific goals.

If it was a unit of energy that could be used by the human body it would have slightly more relevance. But it is calculated based on how well it heats up water when they set fire to it. I don't know how your digestive systems operates, but mine is not getting energy from setting fire to the food I eat.

Dravokivich

seenitall wrote: »

Not quite following, could you elaborate on this please?

Say for example, you want to lose weight, so you should ease up on bread and pasta. But if you want to increase weight, shouldn't you then be shovelling bread and pasta into ya?

I thought that protein rich, carb poor diet is actually conducive to weight loss.

Carbs are the easiest things you eat that your body can breakdown. So if it doesnt use'em it'll store it as fat. If you want to lose weight you drop the amount you take in, to make your body use the fat. If you want to properly manage increasing weight, it should be done with protein, which can add to muscle mass with appropiate exercise. Other wise increasing carbs just increases fat on you.

I think I said the same thing as you from a different perspective.

robinph

Beefy78 wrote: »

I don't understand what you're talking about. I understand what a calorie is. I can process the concept and work with that. Many people are similar I'd say.

It's just that a calorie does't mean anything in terms of nutrition:

Wikipedia wrote:

The small calorie or gram calorie (symbol: cal) is the approximate amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere.

If you can figure out what burning an item of food in a box surrounded by water and measuring the change in water temperature has to do with nutrition then we'd be delighted to know.

Dravokivich

robinph wrote: »

It's just that a calorie does't mean anything in terms of nutrition:


If you can figure out what burning an item of food in a box surrounded by water and measuring the change in water temperature has to do with nutrition then we'd be delighted to know.

I'm interested in the difference between cooked and uncooked. Some food may have a lower calory count then we're being told!

Tiddlypeeps

robinph wrote: »

If it was a unit of energy that could be used by the human body it would have slightly more relevance. But it is calculated based on how well it heats up water when they set fire to it. I don't know how your digestive systems operates, but mine is not getting energy from setting fire to the food I eat.

Fortunately restaurants aren't that fond of cooking up lumps of coal and serving them as food. The vast majority of calories in the food any restaurant is likely to serve contains almost entirely digestible calories.

At worst they are over estimating by including the odd bit of fibre or alcohol in the total, so a person who has weight loss as a goal can still use the information provided to make a better choice than they would have otherwise.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be great if restaurants included macros along with calories, but stating that the calories figure alone is completely useless is outright false. Just because it doesn't fit your needs does not mean it is useless to everyone else.

AndonHandon

Dr.MickKiller wrote: »

The triple decker is 1,178 but I don't think they do them anymore.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/o-briens-sandwich-bar-chicken-bacon-triple-decker-on-brown-bread-4864893

No wonder the receiver got appointed.

AnonoBoy

robinph wrote: »

I don't know how your digestive systems operates, but mine is not getting energy from setting fire to the food I eat.

You should upgrade.

I can heat bathwater with my belly since I shelled out and got myself a Intesticinerator 2000.

kylith

Dravokivich wrote: »

I dont watch calories, carbs, proteins or fat intake. But if I want to watch my weight, its carbs id be looking at. Neither of the other 3.

Please excuse my denseness but how does my body know the difference between one beef calorie and one bread calorie?

Hollister11

How would they calculate it ?

stimpson

mariaalice wrote: »

What's happening there is the risk/balance rewards isn't working for you, in your head a steak is more that 3 times as tasty as a salad, so its not worth if for you to choose a salad.

I would argue that it's working perfectly fine for me. It's everyone else that has a problem.

robinph

kylith wrote: »

Please excuse my denseness but how does my body know the difference between one beef calorie and one bread calorie?

That's the point, they are not comparable by a measure such as calories.

Dravokivich

kylith wrote: »

Please excuse my denseness but how does my body know the difference between one beef calorie and one bread calorie?

Your body knows the difference between proteins and carbs. Just as you know the difference between apples and oranges, but together we call them fruit.

ShadowHearth

If you asked me about it more then 3 months a go, I would say: "feck off and stop telling me what I put in my mouth, I eat what I want".
I am on healthy ( a lot healthier ) lifestyle and losing a lot of wieght right now and I JUST LOVE calories on the menus. Every time I want to have a "Cheat meal" day, I just check the calories that meal will have and I decide to put away the "cheat meal" day for another week.
It teaches you a lot about calories in general sense. You start doing proper portions in your own home meals too.

kylith

robinph wrote: »

That's the point, they are not comparable by a measure such as calories.

But the energy contained within them is. So how does my body tell that one energy unit comes from carbohydrate and another one comes from protein?

dark crystal

robinph wrote: »

If it was a unit of energy that could be used by the human body it would have slightly more relevance. But it is calculated based on how well it heats up water when they set fire to it. I don't know how your digestive systems operates, but mine is not getting energy from setting fire to the food I eat.

Is that why we call it burning calories then? Food is our body's fuel. Our body burns calories even when we're sitting down or sleeping. To maintain a healthy weight, we have to ingest roughly the same amount of calories the body burns each day and to lose weight, we have to ingest a deficit of calories. Calories in vs calories out.

Haven't they done research which shows that over the period of six months or a year, people on low carb diets lose just as much weight as those on normal calorie controlled diets? Wouldn't that suggest that a calorie is a calorie, no matter where it comes from (in terms of weight loss anyway)?

Of course it's better to get those calories from good, nutritious foods, rather than junk, but in terms of calories, I'm not sure why displaying these on a menu for people who are calorie conscious (not weight training athletes) is a bad thing.

robinph

Comparing foods by calorie values is equivalent of comparing the populations of different countries by adding up the number of people plus... erm, sheep...but then not telling you what the breakdown of that final answer is.

Tokyo

robinph wrote: »

Comparing foods by calorie values is equivalent of comparing the populations of different countries by adding up the number of people plus... erm, sheep...but then not telling you what the breakdown of that final answer is.

True, but if you got to see the people and the sheep all in one place, you'd have a reasonable idea of the breakdown of that population.

I'm not suggesting that calories are the be-all and end-all of how good or bad for you a food is, but it is a lay-man's indicator of how to make better eating choices, which is the point of discussion here. I'd hope that the average person would be able to look at a 1000 cal steak and salad on one plate, and a 1000 cal fry-up dripping with bacon grease on the other, and have the intellect to be able to say which one is going to be better for them.

robinph

dark crystal wrote: »

Is that why we call it burning calories then? Food is our body's fuel. Our body burns calories even when we're sitting down or sleeping. To maintain a healthy weight, we have to ingest roughly the same amount of calories the body burns each day and to lose weight, we have to ingest a deficit of calories. Calories in vs calories out.

Haven't they done research which shows that over the period of six months or a year, people on low carb diets lose just as much weight as those on normal calorie controlled diets? Wouldn't that suggest that a calorie is a calorie, no matter where it comes from (in terms of weight loss anyway)?

Of course it's better to get those calories from good, nutritious foods, rather than junk, but in terms of calories, I'm not sure why displaying these on a menu for people who are calorie conscious (not weight training athletes) is a bad thing.

Well a calorie is not a calorie if you are comparing different foods, which is why it is meaningless. Here is some blogs posts from someone who took to eating 5000 calories a day, but on a low carb high fat diet, and then eating 5000 calories a day on a high carb diet. One you get fat on, the other you don't:

http://live.smashthefat.com/why-i-didnt-get-fat/
http://live.smashthefat.com/why-i-did-get-fat/

Tony EH

kylith wrote: »

Please excuse my denseness but how does my body know the difference between one beef calorie and one bread calorie?

It doesn't need to.

All it needs to know is that if it isn't getting used, it's going to get stored.

Beefy78

robinph wrote: »

Well a calorie is not a calorie if you are comparing different foods, which is why it is meaningless. Here is some blogs posts from someone who took to eating 5000 calories a day, but on a low carb high fat diet, and then eating 5000 calories a day on a high carb diet. One you get fat on, the other you don't:

http://live.smashthefat.com/why-i-didnt-get-fat/
http://live.smashthefat.com/why-i-did-get-fat/

But these numbers aren't being put onto menus for the sort of people who would be on such a 5,000 calorie a day diet. They're for people who want to keep an eye on their consumption.

A mate of mine is a Doctor up in Belfast. He bangs on and on and on about how losing weight is as simple as burning more calories than you injest. I'm sure to people who understand nutrition or want to understand, or who are eating and exercising towards a specific goal there's more to is than that but to 90% of the population keeping it as simple as that works. And it is for that 90% that these numbers are being printed.

kylith

Dravokivich wrote: »

Your body knows the difference between proteins and carbs. Just as you know the difference between apples and oranges, but together we call them fruit.

So, say I eat a ham sandwich. It gets chewed up by my teeth and passed down into my stomach where it's dissolved in a vat of acid. Is my body actively discriminating between which calorie came from the ham and which from the bread?

Does my body even know the difference between protein and carbohydrate, or is it just that the nutrients in one are different from the nutrients in the other?

Tiddlypeeps

robinph wrote: »

Comparing foods by calorie values is equivalent of comparing the populations of different countries by adding up the number of people plus... erm, sheep...but then not telling you what the breakdown of that final answer is.

You keep making silly analogies like this without ever actually saying why or backing it up in the slightest. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously when that's how you try to convince people.

kylith

Tony EH wrote: »

It doesn't need to.

All it needs to know is that if it isn't getting used, it's going to get stored.

Which is my point, really. If I'm trying to generally lose weight rather than build muscle then does it actually matter if I get my 1800 calories from potatoes or from steak? (Leaving aside the fact that eating only one food source is going to leave you deficient in various minerals). Does the average person just trying not to get porky actually need to know how many grams of protein are in their sandwich - isn't knowing how many calories are in it enough?

Mantis1234

Calories aren't meant to tell you how healthy something is, but it can be helpful for people trying to watch their weight. If your caloric maintenance is 2000/day, and you eat 1500 calories a day, you will lose 1 pound a week. If those 1500 calories are from chocolate you're still going to lose weight but you're not going to be "healthy" obviously. That's all it's for, nothing more.
I think calories on a menu are good thing because a lot of people out there don't realise how many calories certain foods actually have. Just look at Secret Eaters. I recall one woman estimating that she eats 1500 calories a day but was actually eating nearly 4000.

robinph

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

You keep making silly analogies like this without ever actually saying why or backing it up in the slightest. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously when that's how you try to convince people.

100 calories could be made up of 25 g of carbs, or 25g of protien or 11 g of fat. Now what use is knowing the number of calories to you if you don't know how many carbs, protiens or fat is in that food?

Tony EH

kylith wrote: »

Which is my point, really. If I'm trying to generally lose weight rather than build muscle then does it actually matter if I get my 1800 calories from potatoes or from steak? (Leaving aside the fact that eating only one food source is going to leave you deficient in various minerals). Does the average person just trying not to get porky actually need to know how many grams of protein are in their sandwich - isn't knowing how many calories are in it enough?

No, I don't think they do.

They just need to know that having that extra 1000 calories on top on the 2500 calories they already ate that day is a bad idea if they're "trying not to get porky".

If you're trying to build muscle for running or cycling, etc, then it's good to know if you're ingesting protein rather than carbs.

kylith

robinph wrote: »

100 calories could be made up of 25 g of carbs, or 25g of protien or 11 g of fat. Now what use is knowing the number of calories to you if you don't know how many carbs, protiens or fat is in that food?

If you get given E100 does it matter how many E5s, E10s, E20s, and E50s it's made up of unless you need a specific number of E5 notes for a particular purpose?

robinph

Beefy78 wrote: »

But these numbers aren't being put onto menus for the sort of people who would be on such a 5,000 calorie a day diet. They're for people who want to keep an eye on their consumption.

A mate of mine is a Doctor up in Belfast. He bangs on and on and on about how losing weight is as simple as burning more calories than you injest. I'm sure to people who understand nutrition or want to understand, or who are eating and exercising towards a specific goal there's more to is than that but to 90% of the population keeping it as simple as that works. And it is for that 90% that these numbers are being printed.

That was the point of the experiments he was doing on himself though, to show that 5000 calories of the right type of food were not equivalent of 5000 calories of another. What the food is made up of is far more important than the actual number of calories that might be recommended as a daily intake.