It’s all over the Internet . . . this crazy idea that calories come in “types.”

I’ve seen articles claiming that “there are three types of calories: carbohydrates, protein and fat.” I”ve seen articles focused on “the types of calories to eat when gaining weight” or discussing “why calorie type makes a difference.”

These writers are seriously misinformed!

Calories are not things. You can”t see them and you certainly can’t eat them! What is a calorie then” It is the energy required to raise the temperature of a gram of water 1 degree Centigrade.

Pounds don’t come in “flavors”, inches don’t come in “colors” and calories don’t come in “types.” To talk like this just wouldn’t make any sense (except perhaps in poetry).

Talking about types of calories doesn’t make any sense, but talking about the quantity of calories does. Some foods are packed with lots of energy, some not. Some activities take lots of energy, some not.

When we talk about the energy in food or the energy used up by an activity, we use the word calories to indicate how much energy we are talking about.

Different foods contain different amounts of energy. In the same way that it takes way more feathers to make a pound than it does of coal, it takes way more celery to hold 200 calories than it does of chocolate.

This fact lays the foundation for some diets and it is also the basis for long term weight control. The feeling we have when we feel “satisfied” after eating is actually quite complex - too complex for us to go into here.

We can however say that the amount of food we eat helps us to feel full and satisfied. And if we can get that full feeling by eating more while keeping our calories less, we run less risk of becoming overweight.

So, the idea the there are types of calories is a myth. The truth is that various foods have different densities of calories.

And the game for the person wanting to lose weight is to eat fewer calories per day than they burn in doing their daily tasks.