Calories Are Useless, Dumb, and Gay
Seriously, enough is enough already!
Not a single day goes by that I’m not subject to the inanities of someone discussing calories in terms of nutrition, health, or weight loss/gain.
So, let’s take it from the top and hopefully put this foolishness to bed once and for all.
The word “calorie” comes from Latin via French from the root “calor” which means heat. That makes sense as a calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise one liter of water one degree (Celsius).
Therefore, if you’re curious how much heat you can get out of burning something (like wood), the calorie is a useful metric.
However, calories are completely fucking useless when it comes to anything related to food, health, or nutrition!
My Poor, Tired Brain
I’m already hanging onto my sanity by a thread, so one of my biggest trigger phrases is when someone refers to digestion in the human body as “burning calories.”
No!
No, no, no!
There is nothing even remotely close to a fire taking place inside your body. Furthermore, your body doesn’t even get warmer when you eat something. If that were true, you wouldn’t need a coat in the winter - you could just stand outside and snack on potato chips.
Therefore, repeat after me - your body does not BURN anything. Furthermore, “burning calories” is an especially dumb phrase because it means “burning some heat.” Doh!
I really don’t know who the first idiot was to think that the human body is an automobile engine and “burns fuel” but I’d like to build a time machine and go slap them in their stupid face.
Nutrition Has NOTHING to Do With Calories
Furthermore, the amount of heat (calories) that you can unlock in a given type of food is utterly useless when trying to do something like lose/gain weight.
Will you lose weight if you don’t eat anything at all? Sure, of course. Will you gain weight if you eat more “calories”? Not necessarily.
Calories have absolutely no connection to nutrition. If you don’t believe me, lock yourself in a room for a week with nothing but donuts to eat. Donuts contain plenty of calories, but you’ll be in the hospital or dead if that’s all you eat for seven days in a row.
Furthermore, you’ll be dead in less than three days if you don’t consume any water, and guess what? Water has zero calories. Calories have nothing to do with health!
Yes, I’m aware that every medical expert, including the World “Health” Organization loves calories, but it’s still wrong.
Also, you cannot “eat” or “consume” calories. That’s like saying you’re eating heat. Please don’t be that dumb.
Even the Numbers Are Wrong
Let’s suppose you think I’m an idiot, and you want to count calories in the foods you eat. Guess what? It’s impossible.
Even if you go over to the super-duper official USDA website, those numbers are wrong. The calorie information from a carrot (for example) is from a carrot that was measured in some lab years ago.
It has nothing to do with the carrots you’re eating right now. Every single carrot has a different amount of water content, sugar content, et cetera, and this can change from day to day depending on environmental factors. Furthermore, there are different types of carrots.
There is literally no way to know how many calories are in a given carrot except by burning it. And if you burn it, guess what? You didn’t eat it, did you? Doh!
Therefore, even the stupid numbers are wrong! Yet people seriously walk around talking about how every single carrot has exactly 48 calories per 100 grams.
No!!
Enough With the 19th Century Bullshit
The calorie as some kind of shorthand for measuring the nutritional content of food was adopted in 1896.
You know, before airplanes existed. Before anyone had electricity in their homes. Before computers or the internet. People were using buggy whips on their horses when this crap was developed.
Why are we still using this outdated “science”? It drives me friggin’ nuts.
The same goes for the Body Mass Index (BMI), invented in 1830, and the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), which was finalized in 1905.
Good lord, it’s time to come up with something new already, people!
Look, I get it, all right? You need some kind of way to measure how much food a person is eating, and “calories” are handy as a one-size-fits-all number. But quit being so lazy, for goodness’ sake.
I’m so, so, so sorry that your overtaxed brain can’t handle a more complex equation like grams of fat, grams of protein, et cetera, but that’s a pretty sorry excuse for sticking to some 19th century bullshit.
Taking care of your body is important. Try investing some time into discovering what it needs, eh? In the meantime, STOP USING CALORIES!