Maintenance Phase - The Trouble With Calories

00:00:00.000 wait i need i need one you need one i had one but then i'm like my my tagline was kind of a

00:00:17.180 spoiler so i'm gonna say something else wait what is it a spoiler of okay i was gonna say

00:00:22.300 welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that raises a cubic centimeter of water by one degree

00:00:29.780 oh buddy that's like the first five minutes uh welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that

00:00:37.920 recommends 2 000 of it per day no that sounds so bad that was the worst wait uh no i love it

00:00:47.960 leave it that's that's by far my worst one we have not done a me episode in a while and it's

00:00:52.920 really showing up how rusty you are i've never co-hosted this show before uh i'm aubrey gordon

00:01:02.660 i am michael hobbs uh and today as you may have gathered i don't know how you would have gathered

00:01:09.320 this we're talking about calories we're doing calories before we get to that if you would like

00:01:12.880 to support the show you can do that on patreon or you can buy t-shirts mugs tote bags all manner

00:01:18.540 of things at T public. Both of those are linked for you in the show notes. And today, Michael

00:01:24.820 Hobbs, it is the first of a two parter calorie diptych. So we have gotten a bunch of emails

00:01:33.560 from listeners, particularly listeners in the UK, wanting us to talk about this new mandate in the

00:01:40.260 UK to add calorie labeling to restaurant menus. And as I got into that research, I found that

00:01:49.660 there was like a ton of stuff that I did not know about calories and just like straight up how they

00:01:56.700 work. So today we're going to talk about, we're going to do part one of our two-parter. I am

00:02:03.980 calling this one The Trouble with Calories. Oh, okay. And next time, we're going to do a deep

00:02:10.160 dive into the history of this kind of like food and menu labeling. We'll get a little teaser

00:02:16.000 taster of it today. Okay. It really blew my mind. I think I and many others have thought of calories

00:02:23.020 as being like a very straightforward measure with very clear science behind it. And as per usual,

00:02:30.440 everything is muddier than we think it is did you think that it was simple because

00:02:34.860 men on the internet are always shouting calories in calories out at you

00:02:38.280 oh you busted me again i know doesn't you know it is i mean so like you already did it but mike 0.68

00:02:47.560 can you tell me what a calorie is okay i'm i'm gonna fuck up the specifics but isn't it the 0.75

00:02:53.860 amount of energy that it takes to raise a cubic something of water by one degree. It's like you 0.97

00:03:01.800 burn, I don't know, a piece of paper underneath a little cube of water and the water gets slightly

00:03:07.240 warmer and you're like, that's a calorie. Is that right? You suspend water in a cubic shape

00:03:13.000 in the air over an open flame. Over a Zippo lighter. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so that's it.

00:03:19.600 and cubic something is exactly right right you're sort of like leaving a blank for that space 0.97

00:03:25.020 because we talk about calories there are sort of two versions that people talk about oh the dumb

00:03:30.040 kilo calorie thing or kilo jewels or whatever yeah we're gonna get emails if i don't say it

00:03:36.180 so i'm gonna say it sometimes because sometimes you look on labels especially if you're like in

00:03:40.400 a foreign country you look on the label and it's like 16 000 calories and you're like i don't

00:03:45.060 understand but then you're like oh they're using like the weird calories yeah the little calories

00:03:49.420 yeah yeah so in physics historically the small calorie is defined as the amount of energy that

00:03:58.940 is needed to increase the temperature of one gram of water by one degree celsius okay most of us when

00:04:05.820 we talk about a calorie are talking about a kilocalorie that's okay the amount of energy

00:04:10.220 that it takes to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree celsius right and

00:04:16.140 that at sea level oh right of course because boiling points are different at different

00:04:20.400 elevations blah blah blah i learned that from the back of the macaroni and cheese box um but then

00:04:25.500 it's it's one of those things where it's like i know what a calorie is in in the sort of the

00:04:29.620 scientific description like i can put all of the words into that order but that doesn't actually

00:04:34.920 answer the question because the way that we interact with calories is like a snickers has

00:04:40.060 i don't know 250 calories and so it's like okay well are they putting a snicker under the water

00:04:45.340 cube and lighting the snickers on fire and like seeing how hot the water gets to me that scientific

00:04:51.880 definition doesn't actually get at what a calorie is really i really appreciate that you're just here

00:04:58.560 to pave the way for what comes next that you're like i have a question about this and i'm like

00:05:03.080 literally the next bullet point in my show notes i'm like but aubrey what does that mean but how

00:05:07.700 do you determine it i know so there are many different ways to measure calories many different

00:05:15.100 kinds of what are called calorimeters. The most widely known and widely used one is called a bomb

00:05:20.980 calorimeter. It is a sealed container that is filled with pure oxygen. Okay. And it is suspended

00:05:30.740 in a container of water. So like inside that sealed container filled with pure oxygen,

00:05:36.900 you put your Snickers bar say to determine how many calories are in it. You ignite it

00:05:43.000 using electrical fuses, in this case, in that pure oxygen chamber. And it gives off heat into this

00:05:50.840 sort of bath of water that it's suspended in. And you've got a thermometer in that bath of water.

00:05:56.180 So I was right about them lighting a snickers on fire. I was joking.

00:06:00.180 Nope, that's what they do. It is worth knowing that the history of like how calories first

00:06:07.420 appeared in written texts and in scientific literature is actually like pretty disputed.

00:06:14.080 I looked into a bunch of different historical sources on this. And basically the closest that

00:06:20.180 folks get to agreement is that calorie was coined as a term to measure heat in scientific literature

00:06:27.200 sometime between 1787 and 1824. Oh, wow. So lots of gaps, big gaps, right? And some people are

00:06:36.860 like it came out of france and some people are like it came out of germany and some people are

00:06:39.900 like it came out you know what i mean like there's like it's disputed where it first showed up who

00:06:43.200 came up with it what they were referring to right it's like nutella or fascism it's like we know

00:06:49.000 it's from europe but it's not clear where great in that region so in that sort of early era in

00:06:56.560 the 1800s ish when calories are sort of coming into more common use in science calories were

00:07:02.560 established as part of the original metric system. Oh, and it starts being used in commerce in the

00:07:09.020 UK and the US starting in the sort of mid 1800s. But we don't really start talking about food

00:07:16.820 calories and kilocalories more broadly until the late 19th century. The first sort of use that I

00:07:25.320 was able to find is that it was first published in a U.S. medical textbook in 1894. This is a

00:07:33.180 constant theme on this show of how young a lot of nutrition science is. Yeah, it's really,

00:07:38.980 really young and also really, really old because some of this stuff hasn't really been revisited.

00:07:44.900 Oh, nice. So what I wanted to do today is just like dig into a few of those core assumptions

00:07:50.800 that we were talking about earlier, right? And I wanted to start by digging in on calories in

00:07:57.520 calories out, which is almost like a dieting meme at this point. Yeah, my god, Mike, tell me about

00:08:04.120 your sort of thoughts and feelings about calories in calories out. I'm sure you've heard it until

00:08:08.280 you're blue in the face. You know, I have a spiel about calories in calories. I have like a thing

00:08:14.500 that I have a thing that I say whenever I'm confronted with this, because as you also know,

00:08:18.780 probably much better than i do the minute you start talking about like fat phobia in society

00:08:23.020 or and anything involving this issue at all you will hear the phrase calories in calories out

00:08:28.080 within like 45 seconds and then when you push back and you're like uh that seems a little bit

00:08:33.960 simplistic what you'll often hear is like well it's true are you saying it's not true oh we've

00:08:38.480 got a science denier over here yeah and my retort to this is always that like human beings do not

00:08:44.460 judge statements only on their truth value right so if you say to me mike my mom was diagnosed with

00:08:51.960 cancer today and i'm like oh interesting did you know the titanic sank in 1912 yeah you're like uh

00:08:57.860 that's that's a little insensitive mike i'm like actually oh it's true you're saying it didn't

00:09:02.200 sink in 1912 when did it sink aubrey we got a science denier on our hands here to me the phrase

00:09:07.740 calories in calories out has always had the same amount of usefulness as saying like well to win a

00:09:13.760 basketball game you have to score more points yeah and then the coach is like well one of my kids

00:09:19.520 like broke his ankle and like the bus isn't here to take us to the arena where we have to play and

00:09:23.580 it's like ah ah to win a basketball game you just you have to score more points yeah right it's like

00:09:28.900 it's true that that's how you win a basketball game but that doesn't tell you how to win a

00:09:32.800 basketball game and like i'm not coming to you with a question like how do i win a basketball

00:09:37.460 game it's like i'm coming to you with a very specific concern and you are then going back to

00:09:42.960 the highest imaginable level of abstraction and telling me the most, the number one first fact

00:09:49.900 about a basketball game that obviously if I'm a basketball coach, I already know. And so when

00:09:55.000 people say calories in, calories out, it's like, it's not useful. And so whether or not it's true

00:10:00.740 is completely irrelevant. It's not an appropriate thing to say in like 99.9% of situations in which

00:10:08.280 it is said. That's my spiel. I feel you. It's a thing that people say overwhelmingly in bad faith.

00:10:14.660 Yes. Right. Good God. Overwhelmingly, it's not coming from people who are seeking to understand

00:10:19.560 because if they were seeking to understand, it would be a question instead of like a weird

00:10:23.800 challenge or a statement or whatever. Right. I have had my own responses to that. They've all

00:10:30.180 been super ineffective, not because there's a perfect thing to say in those moments. No,

00:10:37.220 Because when someone tells you like, it's just calories in calories out, they're telling

00:10:40.920 you they're not gettable and they don't want to understand.

00:10:44.160 We're going to talk about the science of this stuff because I find it really interesting

00:10:47.120 and it's been really illuminating and fascinating and has given me a whole lot more to work

00:10:51.340 with.

00:10:52.100 But this episode is not going to give you rejoinders to people who say that.

00:10:57.040 This isn't the clapback episode.

00:10:59.120 This is not the clapback episode, nor is it the persuasion episode, right?

00:11:04.120 Right.

00:11:04.320 my ineffective response to the calories in calories out stuff i've run through a few of

00:11:10.660 them but the one of the earliest ones was people would be like it's calories in calories out and

00:11:14.820 often they'll say it's the first law of thermodynamics oh i love yes oh i love that

00:11:19.460 one the physics whenever they bring up physics the law of conservation the idea that energy

00:11:23.940 can't be created or destroyed in a closed system right thanks bill nye really smart thank you for

00:11:29.380 that cool appreciate your comments good bow tie the response that i came up with early on to this

00:11:35.080 stuff which i don't recommend was i would be like oh yeah well the first law of thermodynamics only

00:11:41.420 applies to closed systems you tried to out bill nye them that's good it's like so ineffective

00:11:52.320 the reason why that's ineffective aubrey is because you're assuming that they know

00:11:56.640 or give a shit about thermodynamics people who bring up thermodynamics right after calories in 0.89

00:12:03.800 calories out don't know shit about thermodynamics i guarantee i'm sure you're right right because 0.99

00:12:09.160 if you do you know what a closed system is right which is like nothing gets in nothing comes out 0.87

00:12:13.760 and our bodies are not closed systems you're constantly eating food breathing air like you're

00:12:18.300 in an environment yes and there are quite a few research papers that i read in the lead up to

00:12:23.080 this that were like can we stop with thermodynamics and human bodies right like a bunch of researchers

00:12:28.640 were like this is not what it's about everybody i love i love thinking of you doing like only if

00:12:34.640 it's a closed system and then like lifting up a microphone and dropping it on the ground be like

00:12:38.600 yeah gotcha zing so i decided to look into like where did we get this idea of calories in calories 0.83

00:12:49.380 out where does it first sort of appear yeah what fucking message board did this first show up on 0.91

00:12:55.060 the message board of the american journal of clinical nutrition in the year of 1959 wait 0.87

00:13:01.920 really uh-huh so there is this paper that gets published in this nutrition journal by an md

00:13:09.580 named max wishnowski calories in calories out is sometimes referred to as wishnowski's rule

00:13:15.660 He laid out an analysis of existing literature on weight loss and calories and food and all that kind of stuff and concluded that each pound of fat lost or gained, each pound of fat tissue contained 3,500 calories.

00:13:35.660 Oh, that's the origin of this thing, too.

00:13:38.120 This comes up a lot.

00:13:40.000 We're going to get so many little, like, Rosetta Stone moments of like, wait a minute, that thing comes from this?

00:13:46.180 This is the basis of, like, if you switch from, like, I don't know, a supersized meal to a non-supersized meal over the course of a year, that'll save you 17,000 calories, and then you'll lose six pounds in a year or whatever.

00:14:00.460 Like, this 3,500 number is always invoked in these conversations.

00:14:04.680 Yeah, switch from whole milk to skim milk. And before you know it, you will have dropped three pounds without even thinking about it or whatever. Yes. So he determines that each pound of human fat tissue, human adipose tissue has the what he calls the caloric equivalent of 3500 calories. And so from there, he concludes that cutting 3500 calories from your diet would lead to the loss of one pound of fat tissue.

00:14:31.160 Right. Years later, there's this very influential medical textbook. It's called Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease. And it takes up this Wyshnovsky's rule and writes that losing one pound would require an energy deficit of 3,500 calories. Right. So that's where we start to get it seeping out into like medical usage world is like, OK, we're training up future health care providers using this sort of rhetoric.

00:15:00.320 and it sounds really solid right and it makes a lot of sense on its face right and you can see

00:15:05.600 how it becomes individual diet advice because then it can easily be well if you cut 500 calories a

00:15:10.800 day then you'll lose a pound a week right and it seems like here's the answer right we figured it

00:15:16.620 out everybody 1959 we did it yeah you can totally see for all of those reasons you could see why

00:15:22.740 this takes off, right? Yeah. And also, this is an idea from the 1950s. Yeah. We have had really

00:15:30.200 substantial advancements in the last 60 plus years, and we're still kind of in a tough spot

00:15:37.580 with figuring out a bunch of this stuff, right? Yeah. In those 60 years, though, a bunch of the

00:15:43.980 assumptions that Max Wyshnovsky made in developing this calories in calories out sort of approach

00:15:50.680 have since been disproven. I know where you're going with this. So I'm remaining silent.

00:15:56.440 No, tell me where you think I'm going with it. My understanding of the current science is that

00:16:00.260 the human body isn't just like a little calorie processing machine, that your metabolism slows

00:16:06.640 down and speeds up according to all kinds of internal systems. So if you eat 3,500 calories

00:16:14.020 fewer, you don't just keep losing a pound a week until nothingness, until like the singularity.

00:16:19.980 your body eventually is going to adjust and you're going to plateau totally totally and even like

00:16:25.440 highly active people if you sort of like applied this kind of formula of calories in calories out

00:16:31.600 to michael phelps who eats like 7 000 calories a day you'd be like that guy's getting fat even

00:16:38.240 with the levels of activity that he has right but he's not right like there are people that we all

00:16:43.860 know who like eat very small amounts and are fat people or eat very large amounts and are thin

00:16:48.680 people, right? Like, yeah, he assumes that it's a weight loss is a totally linear process. And

00:16:53.780 like, it's almost like a ledger, right? Like you make a deposit or you make a withdrawal and that's

00:16:58.700 it. But he's using a bomb calorimeter to determine all of this. And human beings are not containers

00:17:06.040 of pure oxygen suspended in water, right? When you take in less energy, your body also expends

00:17:11.560 less energy. So over time, it does get harder and harder to lose weight, you lose less and less

00:17:16.640 weight over time if you're restricting calories and not only that but when you lose weight

00:17:23.040 you're losing fat yes but you're also losing muscle mass right which burns calories which

00:17:29.440 burns calories right so like that also really complicates things right wait do you want to

00:17:35.140 hear one of my calories in calories out zingers oh yes please you're like i know you said it wasn't

00:17:41.280 the clapback episode but but i have a clapback i've never actually used this the thing is i always

00:17:48.000 because people are always saying like well oh calories in calories out is true and i'm like

00:17:51.440 well it's a it's an accurate theory but there's just two problems the first problem is calories

00:17:56.800 in and the second problem is calories out and it turns out both of those things are actually

00:18:02.000 significantly more complicated yes by today's standards the evidence that max wishnovsky was

00:18:08.480 using to create this Wyshnovsky's rule, this calories in calories out thing would be considered

00:18:13.260 weak. It would be considered weak evidence by today's standards, right? You're getting Cochran

00:18:17.600 on them. Since then, researchers have found a ton of things that influence our ability to lose or

00:18:24.500 gain weight from hormonal influences to genetic markers to environmental changes, right? Like

00:18:30.980 there are lots and lots of things and none of that is captured in this very simple equation,

00:18:37.860 right the exact thing that makes it so sort of like tempting to believe is the reason that it's

00:18:43.800 like not very accurate or useful right simple it's just like a simple number yeah earlier you

00:18:49.060 mentioned your body does sort of downshift it gets harder right to lose weight as time goes on

00:18:54.460 in 2011 this researcher named kevin hall does some research to directly challenge

00:19:02.020 Wyshnovsky's rule. What he found was that if you only factor in that metabolic sort of downshift

00:19:11.020 and burning fewer calories, Kevin Hall found that Wyshnovsky's rule over predicted weight loss by

00:19:17.220 100%. Oh, wow. So basically people are cutting 3,500 calories from their diet and they're

00:19:23.720 losing half a pound, not a pound. Over time, right? So like part of the way that this works

00:19:27.660 is it's a declining graph, right? The longer you restrict your calories and the more you restrict

00:19:33.460 your calories, the more your metabolism downshifts, the fewer calories you burn and the harder weight

00:19:38.460 loss gets, right? Right. He did this sort of like over the course of a year, he said that calories

00:19:43.740 in calories out would say you would lose twice as much weight as you actually would given the way

00:19:48.160 that your metabolism downshifts, right? Right. And I'll also say like there is some research

00:19:53.440 most famously with the biggest loser study that finds that calorie restriction in the long term

00:19:59.400 actually damages your metabolism and that downshift is permanent right in 2015 just four

00:20:05.380 years later there's a paper that is released in the journal of the academy of nutrition and

00:20:11.040 dietetics and they tried to do this sort of omnibus like here's everything that's wrong

00:20:18.000 with calories in, calories out. Its authors essentially concluded that the rule is easy

00:20:22.900 to use, Wyschnofsky's rule and calories in, calories out is easy to use, but, quote,

00:20:27.500 lacks a contemporary scientific foundation and leads to a large error in weight loss prediction,

00:20:33.960 even over the short term. That's the mic drop. That's the actual one.

00:20:38.260 That's the mic drop. It doesn't account for anything we've learned in the last, like,

00:20:43.560 64 years right there are a few things that they point out one they point out that it doesn't

00:20:48.800 account for the energy that's actually expended in digesting your food we now think that between

00:20:55.060 10 and 15 percent of the calories of a given food are actually just used in the digestion of that

00:21:01.120 food wow so take like 10 off the top it also doesn't account for a ton of stuff that we've

00:21:07.800 learned about your endocrine system and hormones and how those influence body shape and size it

00:21:12.780 doesn't account for cortisol or ghrelin or insulin. All of those are hormones that are

00:21:18.620 known to impact your digestion, your blood sugar, your hunger and satiety cues, right?

00:21:25.200 Like all of that kind of stuff is completely left out of this. It also doesn't distinguish

00:21:31.840 between what the difference is between calories from different sources. It's not distinguishing

00:21:38.200 between calories from fat versus carbs versus protein sure right but also i didn't think the

00:21:45.600 jury was still out on calories from alcohol what meaning like they don't count for like making you

00:21:52.420 fat or something i'm gonna send you a quote from a doctor okay uh it says there's a big debate on

00:22:00.200 whether alcohol calories are even usable whether you can even turn them into fat it's not easy

00:22:05.620 says ken fugioka md a weight loss expert at scripps health in san diego when you look at

00:22:10.760 various studies you actually get mixed results some studies say it's not a problem don't worry

00:22:15.080 about it others say it's associated with weight gain so it's a real open mess wait so yeah dude

00:22:21.960 so it might be the case that just like booze calories don't count ed mcmahon might be right

00:22:28.260 we don't know i'm writing our inevitable diet book in my head right now like actually i include that

00:22:35.420 not to be like everybody go get wasted but to be like look that is a thing that i really thought

00:22:43.060 was like a bedrock thing no it is a really open question about how your body processes calories

00:22:50.460 from alcohol i mean this is kind of the calories in problem yeah because two people might eat the

00:22:56.940 same meal and like you know both have a hamburger and a beer and one person will like be able to use

00:23:03.140 800 calories and the other person will be able to use like a thousand calories right totally

00:23:07.840 so like that's actually another point that these authors of this paper bring up is they're like

00:23:12.700 look look look look look even if we came up with the best possible population level modeling of

00:23:19.100 like what will generally contribute to weight loss or weight gain at the population level

00:23:24.260 that's not going to translate into individual behaviors because it can't capture individual

00:23:31.600 biological differences right you can restrict calories all day long for someone with lipedema

00:23:37.820 they're not going to lose weight in the same way that a person without lipedema would lose weight

00:23:43.000 right and there's just not really like a handy dandy calorie calculator that incorporates all

00:23:49.760 of those things and can just go all right your personal calorie level is this like no we don't

00:23:55.040 know how to do that and even if we did again calorie restriction doesn't produce weight loss

00:24:00.260 long term, it slows you way down over time. The thing that these sort of authors conclude with

00:24:06.900 in this paper is genuinely that models like these, these kinds of universal models of like

00:24:13.840 everybody needs to eat this many calories or restrict this many calories and that will lead

00:24:18.540 to this kind of weight loss, cannot be used to predict any individual's weight loss or gain.

00:24:25.400 right that is how far they go it's not just like there are some exceptions where this wouldn't

00:24:30.320 apply it's like this doesn't work for any individual right stop using it yeah and i think

00:24:37.560 that's also like borne out by our personal experiences right like if anybody's tried to

00:24:42.060 lose weight you know that you plateau real hard and like the longer you go the harder it gets

00:24:46.980 that's not you losing your willpower or whatever else we have sort of learned to attribute that to

00:24:54.160 that is your body kicking in and like a bunch of bodily systems kicking in to downshift how much

00:25:01.440 energy you burn and to conserve energy and to make sure that you have enough energy to continue to

00:25:06.180 live and survive. And none of it's in your control at all. It's just like an automatic thing that

00:25:10.820 your body does basically. Yeah, totally. So when this 2015 paper comes out, the debate around

00:25:16.060 calories in calories out is just sort of continuing to go. There are a bunch of different perspectives

00:25:21.480 on calories and weight loss and what really works and what really doesn't in the research,

00:25:26.400 but they pretty much all agree on one thing. This straightforward, like just restrict calories

00:25:33.240 thing, calories in calories out just doesn't work. The most recent entry into this sort of

00:25:39.700 set of like, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe it's actually this about sort of weight

00:25:44.580 loss and calories is a 2022 paper from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that

00:25:51.180 actually argued that the brain is the primary organ that governs weight loss, not consciously,

00:25:57.840 but nearly all subconsciously. We're trying to like consciously act our way out of a thing that

00:26:04.180 is happening in our bodies without our awareness. We're trying to be like, no, you just need to have

00:26:09.020 enough willpower. Well, a lot of the research shows that like willpower around food is just

00:26:13.340 like how much ghrelin is in your system right in that same article they say quote bmi is highly

00:26:20.800 heritable and genetic differences explain approximately 75 percent of bmi variability

00:26:26.700 among individuals whoa other papers that i read put it at 80 percent my understanding of people

00:26:34.700 who have lost weight and kept it off for a long time because like those people do exist

00:26:39.660 is that basically it's ongoing calorie restriction and they're also exercising a lot more their body

00:26:46.000 never kind of gets to the the lower set point and the amounts of weight that people are able to keep

00:26:52.340 off over the long term are relatively small it's like people that have lost like 10 to 20 percent

00:26:57.980 of their body weight yeah the data on this is really bad because the only the only source of

00:27:02.720 data on this is this thing called the national weight loss registry which is like self-reported

00:27:06.580 and like, no one knows how true any of it is. Yeah, I will say in all of the research that

00:27:11.360 you and I have done for this show, maybe you have seen something I have not. I have yet to see

00:27:16.540 data that shows someone who was fat for their whole life, becoming thin and staying thin.

00:27:23.020 That's interesting. Yeah, right. So like, I have definitely heard about people who were like,

00:27:27.520 Oh, I gained 20 pounds or 30 pounds through my pregnancy. And now I need to lose it.

00:27:31.440 But I have heard stories and anecdotes and seen data about thin people restoring their thinness.

00:27:38.700 I have not seen or heard stories of fat people becoming thin and staying that way.

00:27:45.360 That's a really good point.

00:27:46.240 I've heard this from doctors that when somebody comes in who has lost more than 10% of their weight, the doctors will be like, oh, you were only at that higher weight for like three months, right?

00:28:00.540 Yeah.

00:28:00.700 yeah it's usually these like brief periods but yeah that's that's a really interesting

00:28:04.580 distinction i also have not heard of like someone who's just been fat their whole life

00:28:07.800 taking it off and keeping it off although i'm sure those people exist because it's a big country and

00:28:11.540 something yeah i'm not gonna say it doesn't exist i'm just gonna say like it doesn't show up very

00:28:16.580 often in the research because so much of the research is geared toward like how do we find

00:28:20.720 effective methods of weight loss yeah which is all temporary and all of which is built around

00:28:26.460 the expectations of thin people and thin bodies, right? Right. I don't offer any of this up to like

00:28:31.620 drive us toward like, better weight loss solutions or any of that kind of stuff.

00:28:36.180 Just to illustrate how deeply wrongheaded our assumptions about weight and weight loss are

00:28:43.060 and fatness and fat people are, it's incredibly clear in this research that like calories in

00:28:49.900 calories out is not a thing, right? It shows up kind of everywhere. And we've just sort of

00:28:54.420 accepted it pretty uncritically. And researchers are not accepting it uncritically.

00:28:58.840 It's also very interesting that these findings bounce around kind of technical fields or like

00:29:03.480 more STEMI fields, which is like, oh, yeah, it's really difficult for anybody to lose weight. And

00:29:08.660 like a lot of it's inherited. And then when you look at the sort of the sociological conversation,

00:29:14.040 the popular conversation and the political conversation, it's like none of that stuff

00:29:17.900 has jumped over. No, the conversation about it is like, well, like we're gonna we're doing a

00:29:22.240 municipal project to help everybody lose weight it doesn't engage with this literature at all

00:29:27.580 not only does it not engage with the literature it engages with literature that has been actively

00:29:32.800 disproven and debunked right like it's like actively like no let's pull out the bad stuff

00:29:38.900 that doesn't work and that makes people feel bad and that everyone hates and that we've all

00:29:43.940 tried a bajillion times like yeah let's do that okay so i'm gonna move us on to the next thing

00:29:50.560 That was assumption number one. We got moves to make here.

00:29:54.320 So tripartite structure.

00:29:55.980 The next assumption that I wanted to look at is the idea that the calorie counts that we see on food labels or restaurant menus or whatever are an accurate and useful sort of set of information in understanding how our bodies use those calories.

00:30:13.080 I am so interested in this.

00:30:14.920 I am so excited to tell you about it.

00:30:17.760 there's no way those chipotle calorie things are accurate there's no way okay so all of this 0.94

00:30:25.380 calories in calories out shit assumes that human bodies operate in the same kind of way as a 0.89

00:30:30.340 calorimeter we don't digestion takes time it's like a bunch of chemical reactions are happening 0.97

00:30:36.780 in your body it's real slow and our bodies don't actually extract all of the calories in a given

00:30:43.380 food. You might be eating 200 calories worth of something, but your body might only be able to

00:30:48.620 absorb 100 calories of it. Right. Before we start the section, I want to give a content note

00:30:52.840 specifically for Michael Hobbs. Oh, no. This section is going to include poop stuff. So I

00:30:58.180 apologize in advance for poop stuff. I could see it coming. You could see it coming. Uh-huh. I've

00:31:03.400 been tensed up since I heard the word digestion the first time in this episode. Yeah, sorry,

00:31:07.340 it's happening. The veins on my neck sticking out. Yeah. So some folks may have heard that we

00:31:12.940 use nine calories in each gram of fat and four calories each per gram of protein and

00:31:19.920 carbohydrates. I've absolutely come across this. Yeah. Those numbers come from a sort of surprising

00:31:25.580 source. I think they were developed about 120 years ago. And the person who really put this

00:31:32.140 on the map was a chemist and a chemistry professor named Wilbur Atwater. Is this a

00:31:38.400 name you've ever heard before? I don't think so. He's the son of a Methodist minister who's also

00:31:42.120 law librarian normal combo he's born in 1844 so we're talking about the 1800s here and he grew up

00:31:48.920 during the temperance movement do you know about the temperance movement yeah it's like a bunch of

00:31:54.160 ladies saying like don't drink yeah pretty much like his father in this case the minister slash

00:32:01.240 law librarian was a huge advocate of temperance oh okay i'd say all of that as a way to say this

00:32:06.700 dude was like presumably around a lot of rhetoric around quote unquote resisting temptation oh right

00:32:12.500 atwater was a professor of chemistry at wesleyan after he graduated from yale from 1873 until he

00:32:19.420 died in 1907 so he was there for decades he was the usda's first chief of nutrition investigations

00:32:27.700 he also in 1896 published the first guidebook to the nutritional values of different foods that we

00:32:36.380 eat it was called the chemical composition of american food materials okay what it tried to do

00:32:41.820 was spell out sort of how much fat carbohydrates and protein is in each food and how many calories

00:32:50.980 are in each food right so we've identified calories and he's trying to break foods into

00:32:56.880 their like constituent parts like what what do the calories mean basically yeah it is also worth

00:33:01.000 knowing that the aforementioned women's christian temperance union ended up running a campaign

00:33:06.980 against atwater oh because he ran an experiment on the caloric value of liquor oh so he had a test

00:33:18.060 subject in this study he put this test subject on a diet of mostly alcohol for six days nice and was

00:33:24.800 like well this person didn't die they kept living their body kept working so alcohol is a food and 0.99

00:33:31.840 the women's christian temperance union was like fuck off get out of here i love the days of science 0.99

00:33:37.140 where it was like let me just hit someone with my car and like see what happens and that was like 0.99

00:33:42.240 that was like a study make this guy drunk for six days yeah so at this point french and german

00:33:50.000 scientists had sort of done some work to define calories and learn some basics about how they

00:33:54.240 worked, but it wasn't clear whether fats and carbs and proteins were all utilized in the same

00:33:59.320 kind of way. So that's what he tries to figure out, right? Can I tell you how he figured that

00:34:06.100 out, Michael? Is he just setting a bunch of like fat and carbs on fire? So we talked earlier about

00:34:12.100 calorimeters and bomb calorimeters in particular. He's measuring the calories in a given food.

00:34:17.820 And then what he wants to find out is what's the caloric availability of that food. So like

00:34:22.680 of those calories how many can your body use so the way that he does that is he calculates the

00:34:30.500 caloric value of a food and then he feeds that same food to a bunch of different humans no no

00:34:38.180 i know where this is going now i know why you warned me he collects their poop after they eat

00:34:45.600 that food and then he burns the poop in the bomb calorimeter no caloric value of the food

00:34:51.680 minus caloric value of the poop equals what calories you absorbed and used i refuse to

00:34:59.120 understand how poop works but is that accurate does that give him a reasonable count no okay

00:35:07.340 for more than 50 years researchers have known that these atwater factors are like

00:35:13.440 not necessarily wrong although possibly totally wrong but not the whole picture okay so i just

00:35:20.780 sent you a quote this is from an article in the new scientist okay it says while atwater took into

00:35:26.860 account the fiber in food which we can't digest hello sweet corn as well as the nitrogen extracted

00:35:32.800 from protein and excreted as urea in our urine he didn't take into account the heat given off

00:35:38.780 during metabolism this is known as diet induced thermogenesis and is the significant energy cost

00:35:44.920 of converting protein fat and carbs into the amino acids fatty acids and glucose that our body needs

00:35:50.620 So, okay. So the food to poop pipeline is leaving out a bunch of extra stuff that

00:35:58.240 would have affected the calorie counts.

00:36:00.520 Totally. And I think this is another place where it's reasonable to assume that because of all the

00:36:05.120 sort of individual differences that we talked about before, this is probably not super useful

00:36:10.080 as an individual guideline. This is a little part of the picture. It's a real old dusty little part

00:36:17.020 of the picture. Do we have a better estimate now on like fat carb calories? Like have these numbers

00:36:24.120 been adjusted or are we just like, eh, we think they're in the ballpark. They may be in the

00:36:29.040 ballpark, but again, like it's less about whether or not those numbers are right or wrong and more

00:36:34.060 about how they're contextualized within other body systems. Right. The reason to drill down on these

00:36:39.080 kinds of numbers would be to get a better sense of like how to restrict calories for weight loss.

00:36:44.060 And we already know that that's not actually like a super functional method across the

00:36:49.340 board.

00:36:49.720 Again, not saying it doesn't work for anybody, but like for the most part, when we look at

00:36:53.540 these numbers in the aggregate, it just doesn't work for the vast majority of people.

00:36:58.000 Well, we also know from our Snackwells episode that this thing of fat being way more calorific

00:37:04.640 is like one of the reasons why we got like decades of low fat dietary recommendations.

00:37:10.200 Yeah, totally.

00:37:10.780 This stuff really matters, even if it's like on pretty shaky, like poopy foundations.

00:37:18.060 Yeah, I mean, I think all of this stuff matters not because of what it means for like how to

00:37:22.060 maintain or lose weight, but because of how it influences the diet industry and how that diet

00:37:26.720 industry shapes culture and shapes our cultural understandings of each other's bodies and our

00:37:31.660 own bodies, right? So like, that's the stuff that I find most fascinating about all of this is just

00:37:36.960 how far apart those worlds are of like science and research versus what is able to be commodified

00:37:45.440 what is able to be sold what is able to be used for advertising right and this belief that it's

00:37:50.480 like it must be real because it's numbers totally and i would also say like listen we talked about 0.92

00:37:55.940 like calories in calories out gets deployed in this like totally fucking bad faith way right 0.93

00:38:01.600 Yeah. 0.90

00:38:01.900 But I also think we deploy it in pretty bad faith ways with ourselves, too.

00:38:05.600 The self-talk that folks will use when they are restricting calories

00:38:09.900 can be really, really cruel and can be really, really unforgiving.

00:38:13.800 And that also becomes how they sort of learn to think about other people

00:38:18.180 who they perceive as failing to lose weight, which includes fat people, right?

00:38:23.100 Right.

00:38:23.340 Okay.

00:38:23.900 So the next sort of assumption that I wanted to look at

00:38:26.780 is this idea that we should all be aiming for 2,000 calories a day.

00:38:30.720 Yeah.

00:38:31.120 I think most of us presume that 2,000 calories per day is sort of the correct amount of calories to eat if you want to maintain the same weight.

00:38:40.900 Right. 0.81

00:38:41.240 Even though every fucking label says on it, like, this is not recommended for individual use. 0.99

00:38:47.660 Not a low calorie food. 0.99

00:38:49.000 Yeah.

00:38:49.360 Like, it's even on there of, like, don't use this.

00:38:53.120 And then everybody uses it.

00:38:54.600 Yeah, that's right.

00:38:55.300 so marion nestle wrote a great piece for the atlantic called why does the fda recommend

00:39:02.980 2 000 calories a day i learned so many things from this piece one nutrition labels are super

00:39:12.180 fucking new they've only been around since 1994 oh wow before 1994 labels on food were super duper 0.60

00:39:21.100 limited. Basically, manufacturers pretty much only had to report nutrition information in their 0.98

00:39:27.580 foods if they were making a big nutrition claim or if that food was fortified with vitamins or

00:39:34.820 minerals or protein. Wait, so if I picked up a Lucky Charms box in 1992, it wouldn't have any

00:39:40.300 information on it? It wouldn't have the ingredients? It would because cereal is fortified with vitamins

00:39:44.440 and minerals. Oh, interesting. Okay. That iconic nutrition label of black text on a white background

00:39:50.760 with those sort of horizontal lines in the US has only been around since 1994. They were adjusted a

00:39:56.420 couple of times in 2006. They added a line for trans fats. Yeah, I remember that in 2016. They

00:40:02.660 updated them again. Those changes didn't show up until 2020. Basically, they changed a bunch of

00:40:08.480 serving sizes. Interestingly, ice cream went up in serving size from a half a cup to two thirds

00:40:13.940 of a cup. Yeah, but those fucking serving sizes. They also dropped the requirement to label the 0.99

00:40:19.760 content of vitamins a and c because as it turns out americans generally get a lot of those oh so

00:40:26.520 instead they swap that out for vitamin d dietary sources of vitamin d which americans generally

00:40:30.960 don't get enough of according to the fda and usa that seems like a good change right i was like

00:40:36.200 sure these all seem like reasonable but the other thing that they did with that most recent label

00:40:41.120 change which you might have noticed i definitely did is that calorie counts on packages got huge

00:40:46.820 Oh, yeah, they did the like graphic design update. Yeah, they got really big and really bold. And they were like, this is the number that matters. Yeah. So here's where we get into wild territory. The FDA says that they didn't actually intend this 2000 calories per day to be a nutritional guideline.

00:41:07.600 what don't you guys make the labels can't you just not can't you just not do it they said

00:41:14.560 that they designed it to be a popular education tool wait well what what does that mean that

00:41:20.460 means that it was designed to be easy for consumers to understand what was in foods but

00:41:26.480 not necessarily meant to like be like here's the hard and fast information slash not be a

00:41:33.500 recommendation for every individual that like you need to eat 2000 calories a day they were like no

00:41:38.120 no we picked 2000 in part because it was a round number that people's brains could hook on to more

00:41:44.320 easily right essentially they wanted consumers to be able to compare the nutritional value of

00:41:49.580 different foods to one another and kind of compare apples to apples a little bit but in order to do

00:41:55.600 that they had to standardize serving sizes they had to standardize calorie counts they had to come

00:42:03.220 up with this standardized system so that everybody was getting the same sort of information right

00:42:07.640 so you can have a snickers and a mars bar one in each hand and you can say like well this one is

00:42:11.760 25 of my fat and this one is 31 or whatever what do you want to pick exactly yeah 2000 calories a

00:42:18.340 day was not based on nutritional or medical best practices it was not based on recommendations

00:42:24.760 from scientists it was not based on research into any kind of sort of optimal diet or weight

00:42:31.580 management or any of that kind of stuff it was based on americans self-reported calorie intakes

00:42:38.720 through usda surveys no way this show loves self-reported dietary information i have a

00:42:48.020 bullet point in my notes that just says mike tell us what's wrong with self-reported calorie intakes

00:42:52.520 but we already did that in this episode like twice and in other episodes multiple times so i'm like

00:42:58.420 we're good. Yeah. I bring this up. I bring this up at parties now. Like this, all of the data

00:43:03.340 is just a garbage. It's nonsense. So in those USDA surveys, what they found was put all together, 1.00

00:43:12.300 men, women, and children self-reported consuming between 1600 calories a day and 3000 calories per

00:43:19.820 day. Oh, see, I was just going to say, I mean, most people underestimate the number of calories

00:43:26.020 they're eating per day because like we all want to seem virtuous and eating less is virtuous.

00:43:30.480 So the 2000 is like way too low. But if the range of self-reported calories is between two and

00:43:37.560 3000, that means the actual numbers are significantly higher. So they essentially

00:43:42.120 decide to aim for kind of the middle of that range. The FDA initially proposes a recommendation

00:43:48.580 of 2350 calories per day. Okay. Anytime you issue rules, which are like the things that a state

00:43:57.460 agency can just decide for themselves, they don't have to wait on Congress or the president or the

00:44:01.280 state legislature or anything else. You have to have what's called a public comment period, right?

00:44:06.900 So I'm going to send you this is like a little bit of a long quote. This is from the Marian

00:44:10.980 Nestle piece about how did we get from 2,350 calories per day as sort of generally the middle

00:44:19.020 of that range that they were provided to 2,000 calories a day. It says, despite the observable

00:44:25.260 fact that 2,350 calories per day is below the average requirements for either men or women

00:44:30.720 obtained from doubly labeled water experiments, most of the people who responded to the comments

00:44:35.540 judged the proposed benchmark too high. Nutrition educators worried that it would encourage

00:44:40.440 overconsumption, be irrelevant to women who consume fewer calories, and permit overstatement

00:44:45.700 of acceptable levels of eat-less nutrients, such as saturated fats and sodium. Instead, 0.97

00:44:51.240 they propose 2,000 calories, as consistent with widely used food plans, close to the calorie

00:44:56.700 requirements for post-menopausal women, the population group most prone to weight gain,

00:45:01.400 a reasonably rounded-down value from 2,350 calories, easier to use than 2,350 calories,

00:45:07.740 and therefore a better tool for nutrition education.

00:45:11.280 Whether a rounding down of nearly 20% is unreasonable or not,

00:45:15.320 the FDA ultimately viewed these arguments as persuasive.

00:45:18.940 Wow.

00:45:20.520 Yup.

00:45:21.140 So it's just like, it was easier.

00:45:23.480 It appears from this account that the primary reasons were, 0.83

00:45:29.320 this is going to seem irrelevant to women who are already restricting calories,

00:45:33.240 so they just won't pay attention at all. 1.00

00:45:35.080 and if we tell them 2350 then they're gonna eat more than that so we have to tell them less

00:45:41.440 so it also like accounted for people eating more than 2000 calories they thought that they would

00:45:47.400 say 2000 and people would eat more than that it has sort of introduced this what is in retrospect

00:45:54.120 an entirely arbitrary number right so like it started out with bad data and they were like

00:46:00.100 here's kind of the middle of that bad data and then they were like no that's too high yeah and

00:46:04.320 walked it back to 2000 calories. And it just seems like this like, very clear example of the ways

00:46:12.940 that our public policy around food and the information we have access to is just always

00:46:19.480 shaped by our social sort of fears and anxieties around fatness and fat people and our disgust or

00:46:26.960 rejection around fatness and fat people, right? It is this very familiar two step, where whenever

00:46:33.320 you criticize these things as like the 2000 calorie thing seems kind of fake and arbitrary

00:46:38.340 you then get the response that's like no no it's science and then you're like okay let's talk about 0.95

00:46:43.060 the science and then the science is fucking trash it's not science yeah totally i mean i feel like 0.96

00:46:48.420 you would be hard pressed to find like a hardcore like nutrition researcher who would be like those 0.98

00:46:53.900 are good numbers good job fda it's also weird how if the first step can just be like admitting like

00:47:00.060 okay, we chose this number because we wanted to raise awareness of the dangers of obesity,

00:47:04.740 right? That's why we did it. Okay, fine. You did that then. Fine. But now we know more about

00:47:10.160 obesity and we also know more that this isn't necessarily helping people. And so if this is

00:47:15.960 an ideological slash communications number, then we should probably change it so that it

00:47:20.280 suits that purpose. And we should be clear with people that we designed this as a communications

00:47:26.620 tool not as dietary guidance right which is the way that it's being used my god totally it also

00:47:34.000 makes these diets these like 1200 calorie a day diets which are like very common even more

00:47:39.620 chilling right because in your brain when you hear that of like okay i'm supposed to eat a

00:47:43.860 thousand calories a day on like whatever diet i'm on in your brain you compare that to 2 000

00:47:48.380 calories a day like that's what my brain does i'm like oh that's like half what you're supposed to

00:47:51.760 be having but if the original number was 2350 and it's based on self-reported data which is

00:47:56.340 artificially small, it's like a thousand calorie a day diet is like a third of what people should

00:48:01.800 be eating in a day. Well, and when we get into like how calorie restriction messes with your

00:48:06.900 metabolism and sort of changes how your body functions, it's not just a like, oh, we got this

00:48:12.540 wrong. Right. There are repercussions. Right. And this feels like the most benign information,

00:48:18.060 just like how many calories are in a food? It's just a fact. Here you go. Yeah. And as it turns

00:48:23.440 out, none of those things are exempt from being shaped by cultural values. None of those things

00:48:30.100 were designed as guidelines and none of those things have neutral impacts, right? Like those

00:48:36.080 are all things that do have implications for your attitude toward food and your body image and all

00:48:42.800 other kinds of things, right? How you feed your family. I feel a little vulnerable in this episode,

00:48:48.400 I will say, because this is all stuff I did not know.

00:48:52.960 Me neither.

00:48:53.240 Me neither.

00:48:53.620 It feels really, it feels a little alarming.

00:48:56.360 It's also chilling to contemplate just how entrenched 2000 calories a day is as a concept.

00:49:01.420 It isn't something that's like the controversial number 2000 a day.

00:49:05.060 Nope.

00:49:05.400 It's like so predictable that it would be used this way too.

00:49:08.220 Right.

00:49:08.720 Yeah.

00:49:09.020 If you're like, oh, we did it so that consumers can better understand.

00:49:12.420 Well, they would better understand in order to make different decisions.

00:49:15.500 Right.

00:49:15.840 So the idea that it would just be for sort of purely educational and informational purposes,

00:49:21.360 but that that would not influence your behavior is also naive.

00:49:26.820 Yeah.

00:49:27.020 So that's it for this week. 0.97

00:49:29.580 I wanted to start us off by like laying some groundwork of like, oh shit, calories are 0.92

00:49:36.420 not as straightforward as we thought they were. 0.93

00:49:38.280 Yeah, this stuff is really fraught.

00:49:39.640 Isn't it?

00:49:40.300 Yeah.

00:49:40.860 It just, I feel like the deeper we go into this kind of stuff, the murkier it gets, but

00:49:45.280 it feels like a productive kind of murky does that make sense yeah i feel like there's we're

00:49:49.840 coming to like a theory of science and institutions on this show kind of like as we zigzag from

00:49:55.640 episode to episode i'm always really struck at how consistent it is that scientific institutions

00:50:02.480 are like we have to twist the science to get this outcome that we want and the outcome is always

00:50:07.520 like well everybody needs to be thinner and i don't think anyone seems to have like contemplated

00:50:13.040 or like asked really basic questions of like, is this a goal that we want? Or like, is this going

00:50:17.840 to have like really predictable unintended consequences? I really think the variable is

00:50:23.780 like bias. I think being biased against a group just makes you kind of like roll your eyes at

00:50:29.040 their concerns. In all these things, it just seems like this like really obvious blind spot

00:50:33.820 that nobody seems to have contemplated at the time or brought up at the time in a way that feels

00:50:39.680 very anti-science. Yeah. I mean, I think, listen, we talked about this a little bit way back in our

00:50:45.000 episode on anti-fat bias. You know, there are these sort of astronomical levels of anti-fat

00:50:51.280 bias from healthcare providers directed at their fat patients. You know, I would say the same thing

00:50:58.220 about researchers and public health officials and bureaucrats and all of the folks who are

00:51:04.520 taking up the mantle of continuing the quote unquote obesity epidemic and continuing to

00:51:10.060 drive this public health weight loss stuff. We're all products of a culture that is really deeply

00:51:16.540 judgmental of dismissive of and rejecting of fatness and fat people. And the idea that because

00:51:23.100 someone has an advanced degree in a hard science, they would have also overcome all of those biases

00:51:28.220 and done all of that deep personal work to like get right in their head or that they wouldn't be

00:51:33.180 subject to the same kinds of cultural ideas as the rest of us is wrongheaded. We're all in the same

00:51:38.100 soup. It just feels like really tricky and laden. And I think folks are looking for someone who

00:51:44.720 could just step outside of our cultural context and be like, this is the truth. Here's an objective

00:51:49.820 truth. And we just don't have that because all of us are in it together. Right. We're all in the

00:51:55.180 same pond. And this podcast is the burning Snickers that is slowly raising its temperature.

00:52:01.000 No, this podcast is the burning poop from the person who ate the stairs.

00:52:31.000 You 0.86

Maintenance Phase - May 24, 2022

The Trouble With Calories

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