In are culture we believe that calories are everything. As long as you don’t eat to many calories, you can stay thin, right? Well today your going to learn how this isn’t true, and the many factors that control what calories actually do in your body.

1.Thermic effect of food

This means that it takes calories to digest calories. For example, if you have 100 calories of protein, it takes 30 of the calories just to digest the 100, so your only absorbing 70.

2. Digestive efficiency

Factors like digestive enzymes, bile production, and stomach acid can impact the way calories interact for our body.

3. Microbiome

The microbiome has a massive impact on what calories actually do in our body. Obesity is thought to be due to greater calorie intake than expenditure. Recently, research has looked into the effects of the microbiome on obesity: “Our gut flora is made up of trillions of microbes and there is evidence to suggest that even from the earliest stages of life, altering that flora can affect human’s ability to gain and lose weight, which can lead to obesity and ultimately other disease such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and liver disease. Obesity can affect the human body in profound ways and lead to a multitude of comorbidities. We found that the obesity pandemic appears to parallel the increased use of antibiotics seen across the US. In addition, the use of antibiotics can alter the gut flora even from the earliest stages of life and the altered microbiome can alter our body habitus and energy metabolism through antibiotics, diet, and bariatric surgery.”

4. Cooking

Cooking food makes calories more absorbable, but this is not accounted for on food labels.

5. Processed, or real food

The type of food influences calorie burn. Barr SB, Wright JC. Postprandial energy expenditure in whole-food and processed-food meals: implications for daily energy expenditure. Food Nutr Res. 2010 Jul 2;54. doi: 10.3402/fnr.v54i0.5144. PMID: 20613890; PMCID: PMC2897733.

Results: There were no significant differences in satiety ratings after the two meals. Average energy expenditure for the WF meal (137+/-14.1 kcal, 19.9% of meal energy) was significantly larger than for the PF meal (73.1+/-10.2 kcal, 10.7% of meal energy).

Conclusion: Ingestion of the particular PF meal tested in this study decreases postprandial energy expenditure by nearly 50% compared with the isoenergetic WF meal. This reduction in daily energy expenditure has potential implications for diets comprised heavily of PFs and their associations with obesity.