The Hidden Truths about Calories | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

The Hidden Truths about Calories | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network: "If the plant material we eat has more of its cell walls broken down we get more calories from it. In some plants, cooking ruptures most cell walls; in others, such as cassava, cell walls hold strong and hoard their precious calories in such a way that many of them pass through our bodies intact."

"when the “average” person eats almonds she receives just 128 calories per serving rather than the 170 calories “on the label.”"

"Proteins can require ten to twenty times as much heat-energy to digest as fats, but the loss of calories as heat energy is not accounted for at all on packaging."

"The accounting associated with this process of sharing with the microbes is not considered in calorie counting."

"some foods require our immune system to get involved during digestion"

"the more processed foods are the more they actually give us the number of calories we see on the box"

"Each of us gets a different number of calories out of identical foods because of who we are and who our ancestors were."

"individuals appear to differ in their metabolism depending on just which microbes they have"

"what we inherit as our unique recent history is not the need for some specific amount of meat or fat but instead the preference for as many calories as we can get as quickly as we can get them so that we might have leisure time to invent, organize, and text each other"