Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work If You’re Searching For Long-Term Health

Calorie labeling of menus, menu boards and drive-thrus will soon become a reality. The National Menu Labeling Regulations were released which will require restaurants with 20 or more locations to include calorie information on menus and provide additional nutrition information upon request.

Joy Dubost of the National Restaurant Association believes we cannot predict how consumers will modify their diets based on nutrition labeling of menus.  I disagree. We may not be sure how consumers will modify their diets, but we are free to predict anything.  Someone can predict that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow morning. Based on our knowledge of natural laws we can predict that he/she is likely to be wrong.

So based on our knowledge of the Law of Satiety, I predict that it is unlikely that calorie labeling of menus will have much of an impact on America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics. The Law of Satiety states that animals eating to full satisfaction (satiety) in their natural habitat will – over time – eat neither too much nor too little for optimum health. In NATURE when food is abundant, animals do not get fat! That is because their appetite mechanisms work perfectly when they eat their natural food. However, if you feed rats bread and chocolate instead of normal rat chow, they get fat. Once rats get hooked on bread and chocolate, they will no longer accept their regular rat chow.

Calorically dense foods are ubiquitous in our modern food environment. – foods to which many people have developed a mild addiction. A calorie dense food is a food that contains a large amount of calories in a small amount (by weight) of food. (e.g., candies, cakes, cookies, pies, fried foods, oil, butter, fatty meats, cheese, ice cream, creamy dressings etc…) These foods are not part of a NATURAL human diet. These foods short circuit the appetite mechanisms of humans, much like bread and chocolate short circuit the appetite mechanisms of rats.

Making calorie counting a little bit easier won’t make calorie restriction any easier for people who continue to consume calorically dense foods on a regular basis.  If people only look at the calorie content of a menu item, they still can make horrible choices.  People need to learn which foods are healthy and which foods are not.

Someone comparing a Wendy’s Baked Potato (270 calories) with a Wendy’s Jr Hamburger (293 calories) may decide that the small difference in calories makes choosing the Jr. Hamburger acceptable. This will satisfy their desire for beef fat (burger patty), and refined flour (bun).

Besides being a disease promoting choice, the Jr. Hamburg is providing 293 calories in a little over 4 oz. of food.   The baked potato provides its 270 calories in 10 oz. of food. A person choosing a baked potato is likely to be satisfied for a longer period of time on those 270 calories than a person eating 293 calories from a small hamburger. When people limit calories without drastically limiting the consumption of calorically dense foods, they are in a constant state of hunger. The reasons for this are included in an earlier blog.

Focusing on calories is another misguided reductionist way of looking at nutrition. If people learn that their diet should be dominated by whole and minimally processed plant foods that are low to moderate in calorie density (fruits, veggies, legumes and whole grains), calorie counting is unnecessary. People with weight issues need to be taught ways to moderate their consumption of calorically dense foods, including whole plant foods such as nuts, seeds, olives, avocadoes and soybeans.

Most people can quickly learn what dietary changes are necessary for sustainable weight loss and good health. The hard part is actually making the changes.

It’s been proven time and again that, for most people, calorie counting doesn’t work in the long term. It never has and it never will.  Dietitians who promote calorie counting as the best way to lose weight are not necessarily helping people move to a healthier lifestyle. In fact, they are setting people up for inevitable  failure.

Some day, most dietitians will be on board in promoting Whole Food Plant Based diets (WFPB) and will spend a large portion of their time helping people make the transition to a truly healthy lifestyle. That day cannot come soon enough.