Is Calorie Counting an accurate way to lose fats?

Here is a real surprise for those of us striving to lose fats and lose weight by counting calories – there might be something not quite right about the calories we are counting.

What is going on?

Most of the time, when we go shopping, we check the food packages for their calorie content. From there, we calculate how much we need and how much we ought to be taking. It seems that experts have recently began to question the accuracy of these numbers.

In fact, there have been concerns that the numbers might be as much as 25% off. This is quite serious. If our calorie intake for the day is 2,000 calories, 25% is equal to 500 calories. That is almost one full breakfast off.

How did this happen?

Modern calorie counting is based on the experiments of Wilbur Olin Atwater, a well known scientist in human nutrition. He invented a machine known as the respiration calorimeter which aided studies in food analysis, dietary evolution, work energy consumption, and digestible foods.

Using this, he quantified the metabolic release of energy by foods and hence, could create a measure of the intake and output of food. It is from here that the concept of food calories first originated.

Today, many people have been arguing that this 100-year-old method is no longer accurate given modern knowledge. By burning the food and measuring the amount of heat generated, the caloric unit of food was taken. However, many believe that this is an over-simplification of the metabolic process and is no longer accurate.

Because we chew food and then put it through the digestive system, the human body is much more efficient in extracting energy from food compared to the primitive method of simply burning it. This issue is still not resolved, but the reality is that calories might be actually under-stated, giving the possibility of taking in more calories than intended.

One way to avoid this is to eat healthy foods, plan your diet in terms of good food groups and exercise regularly. In this way, you will not need to be too concerned about counting individual calories.