Food is More Than the Sum of its Calories

How do you make your food choices?  Do you grab whatever’s quick and easy to hand?  Perhaps you take a look at the nutrition facts and cringe - too many carbs; too high in fat; I was sure there would be more protein in here?!  Do you find yourself a little lost about how much you should be eating, convinced that you’ve overeaten, or hungry again in half an hour?

The challenge with food is that we get wrapped up in the emotional side of eating, and forget the ways in which food serves our bodies.  Yes, food has a strong emotional pull for us - we eat when we’re stressed, to celebrate, and out of boredom.  Certain foods provoke powerful associations - they can be wrapped up in our family history and cultural identity, evoke intense memories of “girls night out,” or intense guilt.  Sometimes it can be valuable to take several steps away from the emotional side of eating, and enhance our understanding of how our food choices nourish and support our bodies.  

This is the first installment in a series exploring the science of nutrition.  I totally geek out on this stuff, and I’ve done my best to narrow the information down to what is most relevant to understanding how your food choices can help you pursue your most awesome self.  

Before we can even answer the questions “is a low-carb or low-fat diet better?” “so how much should I eat anyway?” or set a “calorie goal,” we need to ask “are all calories created equal?”  They are equal in that, when burned for energy by the body, a calorie is in fact a calorie.  However, the calorie counters always seem to gloss over the fact that fuel is only one way in which our bodies use the food we eat.  Food is also a source of building materials to maintain and grow our tissues, and in this context the different macronutrients (protein, fat, carbohydrates, and alcohol) have different roles, and cannot easily be substituted for one another.

As we examine each macronutrient in turn, we need to know several things about it: (1) what functions does it serve in the body?; (2) what happens if we don’t eat enough to meet our needs?; (3) what happens if we eat more than we need?  Once we know the answers to these questions, it will be easier to figure out how much of each macronutrient is a healthful amount for you.  

When a hospital has more patients than they can treat at once, they engage in triage, and determine which patients will derive the most benefit from the available capacity.  Our bodies do the same - if there’s not enough of a given nutrient to go around, our bodies will allocate the available amount to the functions which are most essential to keep us alive, and neglect other functions.  This concept can be considered “nutrient triage,” and is important to keep in mind when designing a diet for our long-term health and peak performance.  (Nutrient Triage was first described by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet in their excellent book The Perfect Health Diet.)

Stay tuned - tomorrow we extol the virtues of Protein!