How we process a calorie depends on genetics, hormones and the food it’s in. The trouble is that 50% of our calories come from ultra-processed foods – everything from biscuits to hummus
Those neat numbers come from work by Wilbur Olin Atwater, a chemist born in 1844 in New York. His painstaking, years-long analysis involved vaporising a huge number of foods in ruthlessly efficient bomb calorimeters, which unwittingly resulted in our modern calorie-counting obsession. He calculated that fat gave us nine calories per gram, and carbohydrate and protein four calories each per gram.
Does this mean calorie counts are pointless? Not entirely. Clare Thornton-Wood is registered dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association. “In clinical practice, we use calorie calculators to work out how much somebody needs if you’ve got someone in ICU and you’re feeding them on a fluid feed,” she says. “We use calories as a starting point.
“The calculation for how many calories you should be eating a day depends on a billion different things,” says Yeo. Is there any way to work out what any one person needs? “We could, but that would mean sticking you in a chamber calorimeter.” Unfortunately, these are rare, very expensive and mean living in a sealed room for three days, with scientists measuring your every breath, movement, consumption and excretion.
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