We all think we know how many calories we’re supposed to consume each day. Easy, right? 2,000. That’s what we’re always told. Wrong.
“Women burn around 2,400. Men, around 3,000. These figures are based on thousands of measurements, taken around the world. So when you look at calories on a label or menu and decide what you can eat based on an intake of 2,000, you’re starting with a made-up number. There’s no added information in knowing the calories,” says Herman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University whose specialism is metabolism. In short, when it comes to calories, people aren’t very well equipped to add them up.
But should they even bother? Here are the hard facts: eating more calories than you burn leads to weight gain. Being overweight or obese is a risk factor for all sorts of diseases.
In the US, calories have been mandated on restaurant menus since 2018, but obesity has continued to increase steadily. In New York, these menus may have even encouraged some people to order dishes with more calories, not fewer. “I don’t know why. I’m not a psychologist. But the idea that people are overeating just because they don’t know the calories? I’m really not sure,” says Pontzer, whose latest book on metabolism, Burn, draws on 20 years of research into what happens to the energy we consume.
Anthony Warner, a former food industry development chef and the author of The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating, points out, “People are not going to be going into a burger restaurant and saying, I didn’t realize there was a massive number of calories in fried and side dishes.”
“Already several of the big chain restaurants offer calorie labelling on their website or on their menus,” Warner continues,” and I’ve not consistently seen evidence of benefit.”
The reasons for that are countless. Obesity is a complex issue, and has a lot to do with economics, society and the way in which certain foods are processed. “The things that will improve obesity will be lifting people up socially and economically, [and] addressing systemic problems, rather than making people feel guilty about calories,” says Warner. In his opinion, a more effective way for big restaurant chains to take on obesity would be “improving working conditions and paying people more.”
The last 70 years have seen ultra-processed food – that is, food made with additives or “industrial formulations” wherein flavor, sugar, fats or chemical preservatives are added – become increasingly common in our diets, and these foods are designed to make us want more. “The issue is not that you’re having an extra 500-calorie meal every day. Most people don’t do that. It’s consuming foods that trick our brains into overeating, which is more subconscious and a very slippery thing to get hold of,” says Pontzer.
These foods are low in filling fiber. They have pleasing textures, strong flavors, and are both quick and cheap. “We still don’t really know what it is about ultra-processed food that generates weight gain,” investigative food journalist and author Bee Wilson wrote in The Guardian in 2020, but “evidence now suggests that diets heavy in ultra-processed foods can cause overeating and obesity… regardless of sugar content.” It’s common, nowadays, to blame sugar, but as Wilson observes, singling out individual nutrients as problematic simply causes the producers ultra-processed foods to tweak their products to fit the trend, turning the “low fat” products of a decade ago into “sugar free” versions and redirecting the attention away from the real problem-maker.
“One day it will be protein,” Pontzer says. “This villainizing of particular nutrients isn’t helpful. I’m not defending sugar, but sugar itself isn’t what leads to weight gain.” What does is excess calories, but if you’re eating foods which aren’t highly processed and are high in fiber, the chances of you overdoing it are unlikely. “No one will get fat from overeating broccoli. i am willing to stake my career on that claim,” he jokes. “It’s not flavor-engineered to be over-consumed, it’s low in calories and it’s full of plant proteins and fibre which make you feel sated.”
The problem with any one measure – sugar, fat or counting calories – is that it doesn’t take into account a meal in its totality. This is why, for Thomasina Miers, co-founder of the Mexican chain Wahaca, calorie counts are “such a blunt tool.” “It makes no reference to fibre when it’s the lack of fibre in our diets that is causing so many problems. It makes no reference to nutritional quality. It makes no reference to carbon footprint” – which of course has no bearing whatsoever on weight gain but is not unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
“There is a law in economics which says when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure. By targeting calories explicitly, that measure stops being useful,” says Warner. The aim of the government and food industry should be to “make food better, rather than better at meeting targets.” The latter only leads to companies hacking the system: serving the same size portion of fries, but recommending they are for two people, for example, or reducing the calories by replacing say, fibre, with liquid. Pontzer says, “It would be nice if they reduced the calories by not taking the fibre out or reduced the protein, but I don’t expect the food industry to act responsibly.” He continues, “They’re in the business of making money.”
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