I’ve enjoyed watching your movie, and so did my kids, multiple times. Singing a little of the “Sugar” song has been very effective to remind them when they’re loading up on fattening stuff. They love the “Guy from CSPI” sections and want to know if we can get t-shirts. Have you looked into Merchandising?

Years ago, another comedian and I produced a radio show titled “The Slagle-Naughton Report.” One of our continuing bits was about the Health Care Police, running around busting people for unhealthy habits. (One guy who got busted had sneaked some coconut oil into a movie theater to drizzle on his popcorn.) The announcer’s refrain: “Health-care criminals steal from all of us.”

We’ve kicked around the idea of merchandising, but of course the focus for now is getting more of the media to notice the film. On the other hand, someone walking around with a Guy From CSPI t-shirt might just spark some interest.

/jk

I understand the concern. The difference could be as much as 20 calories, I’d think. If you’re not paying attention, those 20 calories could put an extra 10 pounds on you over the next five years, according to the calorie-control freaks.

Stephan at the Whole Health Source blog has posted information on relative lectin contents of grains and other foods. I’ll try digging it up if I have time (5 straight hours of meetings today – bleah). I scrounged up info on WGA by googling. Have a link at home discussing test-tube experiments with WGA and fat cells, again will try to look up and post as time permits.

Dave

Mike Eades made that point in one of our interviews: Nobody ever binges on burgers or steak or eggs. He treated thousand of overweight patients in his practice, and when they confessed to binge eating, it was always a high-carb food — or a high-carb, high-fat food, the worst combination.

This made me laugh so hard that my co-worker asked what was wrong with me. I will forever picture my cells yelling at my brain if I feel tempted for a high starch meal and I thank you for that.

Regarding if anyone tells you to keep your political opinions to yourself, I once commented on Dr. Eades blog when people were telling him to stay away from discussing politics that I thought it was highly ironic low-carb followers were trying to suppress an unpopular opinion, because if low-carb bloggers/doctors did not talk about their unpopular opinions, we might not have any low-carb forums at all! Of course I might be biased because I agree with you 100%. The only thing that knowing the number of calories in the milkshakes I used to drink made me do was criticize myself for drinking it, not actually, you know, not drink it.

I can also confirm what Sue mentions about Dr. Eades post; I returned from a trip to China not to long ago and if we were not at a touristy restaurant, my group would have to specifically request or order rice.

I don’t think the calorie counts prevent anyone from pigging out, either. When I get in that “must have pizza and beer” mood, say two or three times per year, nothing is going to stop me.

And as someone who failed on several diets, I know the self-criticism only makes things worse.

http://www.nutritiondata.com gives a very detailed breakdown of foods, including different carb types, amino acids, about 30 fatty acids, minerals, water, alcohol, ash, etc.

Dr Eades is in Hong Kong at the moment and had a post about the lack of rice at a Hong Kong restaurant:
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/safely-in-hong-kong/#more-3025

“Our host apologized because he said the restaurant wouldn’t be serving rice like we were used to in Chinese restaurants in the US. He said the notion that people ate a lot of rice over here is not true – at least not in Hong Kong and the parts of China to which he travels often. ”

“We ate mountains of various kinds of meat and fish and ended up with a giant plate of Peking duck, which we were almost (but not quite) too full to eat. During this entire feast, the servers brought only one vegetable dish to the table. Sauteed, not steamed, broccoli. Delicious. Not a single grain of rice did we see. A few noodles, but not even many of them. And no bread.”

It all breaks down to the same thing though. Enthalpic energy (heat, essentially) is given off when bonds form, taken from the environment when bonds are destroyed. There is less energy in the bonds of CO2 and H2O than in carbohydrate and O2, therefore energy is taken out of the molecule and put into the environment. When burned (as in a bomb calorimeter) this is given off as plain heat, which from the heat capacity of the system and temperature rise, you can calculate the energy in kilojoules (or calories if you hate the metric system).

In the body, the energy is transferred by coupling to other reactions in most cases. This is very abbreviated, and if there are any biochemists about, don’t get angry with the level of this.

But lets say we have 5 kJ of carbohydrate that our body metabolises. This reaction can be coupled (with enzymes etc.) to a reaction that is thermodynamically unfavourable, such as ADP -> ATP (ATP is the basic ‘energy currency’ of the cell). Now lets say that of the 5kJ of energy liberated from the CHO, 4kJ goes into converting ADP to ATP, 0.8 kJ goes into other molecular byproducts and 0.2 kJ goes to heat. Now that ATP could be used for muscular contractions or other metabolic processes, all of which have differing energy demands and differing activity profiles depending on situations. And this isn’t taking into account that the human body just excretes what it doesn’t need.

Basically, as Sherri put it, the human body does not “burn food”.

Don’t tell Kelly Brownell and The Guy From CSPI that the body doesn’t just burn food; they could be come suicidal.

On the other hand … naw, I can’t be that mean.

Anyway, your post was quite informative, do you have a source or are you just trained in that area?

Dave has as PhD in physics and is interested in quite a few areas of science, including nutrition. (Sorry to answer for you, Dave; feel free to chime in.) Since you’re a science hound as well, I think you’ll enjoy his blog.

LPrice and Sherri: There has been some attempt to correct for the errors in using bomb calorimetry for nutritional advice, though until they can sequence someones genome and put it on a disk for them to analyse on a PC, these can never be 100% accurate.

My approach to food choices? Make sure I get whole protein, avoid sugar and refined carbs and eat as many colours as possible (as colours correspond to metal species/vitamins etc. that we need. I tried gaining weight by stuffing myself with extra following these guidelines (3500 cal) and nothing happened until I started doing weights. According to calorie counters I should’ve gained 3 lbs per week. As it is now, I’ve only gained 8 lbs in 4 months following this diet.

You sound like my son. He can’t gain weight even when he tries. His body refuses to store more than a minimal amount of fat. People think we look alike from about the neck up.

What’s the career path for someone studying chemical thermodynamics?