Ever wonder just how they determined what a dietary calorie is, and how they know how much energy you get from it? Like many things in dietary science, the answer is surprising.

They burn it and measure the calories (a unit of heat energy) the food gives off. Sort of. A scientist in the 1800′s figured this out, and we’ve been using his system ever since.

Except it doesn’t work. Your body does not “burn” food, it digests it. So there are problems with the method. But as New Scientist notes, there is resistance to changing the flawed system:

“There will be errors, but not very serious errors, and nobody can do their calories anyway so what difference does it make?” says Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University.

Gotta’ love those nutritionists.

The article gives a real-world example that is worth noting. Two foods may have similar calorie counts but end up being utilized (DIGESTED!) by the body in different ways. A brownie, filled with refined starches and sugars, may have a calorie rating of 250 and a “healthy” snack bar with “complex carbs” a rating of 300, yet the body will extract more calories from the brownie. The dieter counting calories is fooled by the system. But, it doesn’t really matter to nutritionists; no one does it right anyway, right?

After the not-so-compelling browning/muslei bar example, the article actually talks about real food. What you quickly see is that trying to count calories becomes incredibly complex, and as our expanding waistlines have told us, does nothing to help reduce obesity.

For my money, counting what you can’t count accurately doesn’t make a lot of sense. Paying attention to what you eat, and not just how much, seems more consistent with human health.

Unless you think you really are a bonfire. Then burn, baby, burn.

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