Why is it the calorie count of food, and not the mass, that determines weight gain?

583 views

Why is it the calorie count of food, and not the mass, that determines weight gain?

In: 2

24 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Food is full of energy, we measure that energy as calories. And if we get more calories than we need, our body stores rest as fat.

The trick is that food can weigh a lot, but not have a lot of calories. Food that has a lot of water in it, may weigh more and have greater mass, but our bodies can’t convert water into energy and store it as fat. And some food has a lot of fiber in it, which is something else that our body can’t easily digest and turn into energy.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One liter water = One liter sweat and pee

One liter Fat = ….

In Theorie if there would be a food that could be eaten and would leave the body without any change it would be like water. But please don’t start now to eat marbles, it can make you ill or even kill you. If you want a food like this try cucumber.

A analogy is a campfire

You can burn many things in a campfire, and many things will not burn.

* 1 Liter of a lightweight wood will burn very fast
* 1 Liter of Coal will burn long(er)
* 1 Liter sand will not burn at all

Anonymous 0 Comments

Food, no matter the quantity by mass, will be broken down in your body into the parts that your body can use to make energy. Energy is what your body is after. Since everything will ultimately get turned into energy (/energy-storing molecules like fat), this is why calories (a unit of energy as it’s used by the body) is what contributes to weight gain.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Just like how a candle burns slower than paper, or how its easier to drink water rather than milk, Different substances have different attributes. A proper chemist might know more, but it kinda makes sense that you could isolate some excesses of a substance that could, in excess, cause problems.

(Calories are a general rule of thumb but any nutritionist knows its more a concern of excessiveness/lack of moderation which causes health problems like weight gain or other more holistic problems like lack of exercise or depression/poor support structure)

Anonymous 0 Comments

Calorie count is a good approximation of how much energy is available to your body from food. Your body is going to do one of two things with energy: use it or store it. You are only going to use the exact amount of energy you need during the day, anything above that is going to be stored. You get calories from three different sources: carbohydrates, fat, and protein. The calorie density for each of these are different, fat is 9 Cal/gram while carbs and protein are 4 Cal/gram each. Finally, there are parts of food that cannot be used and just pass through your system.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You don’t absorb 100% of the mass of food into your body. For example; fiber, which tends to be dense and heavy, passes right through and out the back door.

If you want to try to calculate the amount of energy derived from food (which is what calories are), you can only count what gets absorbed, not what gets excreted back out.

Body fat is a way to store that energy. More calories = more energy = more fat required to store that energy

Anonymous 0 Comments

Calories mean energy, but whatever energy your body doesn’t use it stores in the form of fat and weight. So eating a lot of calories could mean too much energy your body doesn’t need, which it will convert to fat..

This is why pro athletes eat a lot of calories so that they can do what they need to do as athletes

Anonymous 0 Comments

[removed]

Anonymous 0 Comments

The calorie count of a food is a rough approximation of how much useable stuff is inside it. Your body will take that usable stuff to construct more of you and also to burn for energy to power your body.

If you eat a pound of sand (don’t) your body can’t use it. It will just pass through. Same if you eat chalk.

If you eat a pound of ice cream, well that has fat and sugar and protein. Your body can use all that. Special mini machines in your guts grab hold of all the sugar and fat and protein and move them out of your gut and into your blood.

Imagine that the proteins you eat are like already assembled Lego models. Your body takes the proteins apart into bricks (called amino acids) and then reassembles them to make new protiens– like new Lego structures. Those new proteins become part of the physical structure of your body. So just like you could take a Star Wars Lego fighter and disassemble it into pieces and build a little house, you can take a piece of chicken meat and disassemble it and turn it into human protiens. Just like lego constructions can be solid structures or cool machines with moving parts, protiens can be solid structures like the connective webbing that holds your organs together, or moving machines, like your muscle fibers.

Something similar can happen for fat. Fat is used to make the envelopes of your cells. Each cell in your body is like a tiny soap bubble, and the fats are the slimy stuff that encloses each one.

So you can gain weight by taking these plant and animal fats and proteins and breaking them into pieces and then reassembling them to make more of you.

Sometimes your body has plenty of fat and protein pieces, and it doesn’t need to grow, and so it takes the extra “Lego pieces” and actually burns them and extracts the energy from them.

Most of the time, your body prefers to get its energy from the sugar you eat. Sugar is mixed with oxygen inside your cells and that burns the sugar, just like if it was set on fire. Just like with a fire, oxygen gets consumed and carbon dioxide is released. Your cells have special rechargeable mini-batteries called ATP. One single molecule of sugar can charge 32 ATP batteries. Each mini battery can make one tiny machine in your body move.

Your body can store energy in the ATP mini batteries for short term, but for long term storage, the body makes special structures out of sugar molecules or fat molecules. These structures are made to be tightly packed into storage areas in your body. Later, if you are low on energy, the stored sugar or fat can be burned to charge the ATP mini-batteries.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Food is full of energy, we measure that energy as calories. And if we get more calories than we need, our body stores rest as fat.

The trick is that food can weigh a lot, but not have a lot of calories. Food that has a lot of water in it, may weigh more and have greater mass, but our bodies can’t convert water into energy and store it as fat. And some food has a lot of fiber in it, which is something else that our body can’t easily digest and turn into energy.