12 thoughts on “Chipotle’s Calorie Labels”

  1. Why?

    I’ve heard you say this a whole bunch of times, and while I mostly* agree with you, I can’t remember you actually explaining what you mean.

    * in that I consider regular and consistent weight measurement to be more important than however you make the numbers go down. For me, “counting calories” was how I did it, but I just call it “eating less”.

    1. IIRC, Rand’s position is that what you eat is as important as the number of calories. Eating 2000 calories a day isn’t healthy if it is all cookies.

    2. Not all calories are created equal. It’s not a thermodynamic problem. What kind of calories is much more important than how many. And the focus shouldn’t be on weight — it should be on body fat, and the location of that body fat (e.g., abdominal fat is much worse than breast or buttocks for a woman). Which is why the BMI is junk science, too.

      1. Oh, I see. You’re making an argument about “health”. I don’t disagree with you on that.

        However, most people want to lose weight for reasons other than health, or see losing weight as merely the first step toward improved health.

        1. If you’re truly interested in this, and want the details, surf over to Dr. Peter Attia’s site http://www.eatingacademy.com and look around. Also pick up Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories. If you want the executive summary, grab Taubes’ Why We Get Fat. If you want the nickel tour, it’s basically this:

          (1) The so-called thermodynamic hypothesis (if calories in exceeds calories out, you gain weight; you lose weight if the reverse holds) is true, but only as a trivial solution to the problem – it has little no bearing on weight loss or gain because…

          (2) Contra to the “settled science” :-/ of nutrition, what you eat has a powerful effect on the “calories out” side of the equation.

          (3) For a large percentage of humans (likely at least a third of humanity if not more), refined sugar (especially fructose) and other dense carbohydrates dramatically upset the body’s regulation of fat flow into and out of the adipose tissue, making it well-nigh impossible for the body to use the calories locked up in the adipose tissue and at the same time causing the body to convert those carbohydrates to fat and store them in the adipose tissue. Fructose is uniquely suited to maximize this disregulation of the fat metabolism. Insulin is the key hormone in this cascade.

          (4) The transport of fat from the liver to the adipose tissue, driven by insulin, results in an increase in the LDL particle number, which is the major contributor to plaque formation in the arteries (see Dr. Attia’s cholesterol series on his site for all the gory details).

          (5) The way out of this trap is to more-or-less eliminate sugar and dense carbohydrates from the diet, and replace with protein and fat, preferably monounsaturated and saturated fat (you want omega-3s, not omega-6s, so stay away from vegetable fat sources; nuts are usually OK though). You can chop all carbohydrates out if you want and you will be fine (there ain’t no such thing as a dietary essential carbohydrate). There is some evidence that the state of ketosis that can result from drastic reductions in dietary carbs can be more healthful than running the brain off of glucose…

          OK, the 2-bit tour, not the nickel tour. But seriously, read Taubes and Attia!

          1. Oh, and I didn’t say it explicitly, but these kind of carbohydrate-restricted diets show up time and time again in the literature as the most effective diets for losing weight. Should be obvious from the above, but wanted to make it explicit.

        2. One simple way to test the thermodynamic theory is to feed hay to a cow and a tiger and measure their weight gain over time, plotting dM/dt as a function of the energy content of the hay consumed minus calories expended, making sure that test subject #2 doesn’t eat test subject #1, which sometimes happens in scientific experiments that lack adequate controls.

  3. I’m with you that the kinds of calories we take in are important. But you’re not saying that the total amount mean nothing, are you?

    My own anectodal, non-scientific, totally subjective experience has been that my choice of food types is influential ( very restricted starches in general), exercise helps, but modestly, and food portion control (total caloric intake) is significant, though probably slightly below the carb control aspect.

    Just wondering how closely you hold to whether the total calories matter.

    1. I’m with you that the kinds of calories we take in are important. But you’re not saying that the total amount mean nothing, are you?
      This is where I am, personally. When I hear people say, “counting calories is pointless” or “counting calories doesn’t work” or “calorie count is essentially worthless”, I wonder how far they actually mean to take that. I can’t honestly think that 4,000 calories/day of protein and “good” fat will lead to better health or lower weight than 2,000 calories/day of a mix of complex carbs, protein, fat, greens, and sugars.

      I understand that the whole “3500 calories = 1 pound” myth is just that, a myth, inasmuch as one extra 50-calorie cookie/day won’t lead to a 5 pound weight gain over the course of a year. But moderation in consumption surely must be taken into account at some point.

      I guess I’m lucky to be in the two-thirds of the population for whom carbs and sugar don’t dramatically affect my adipose fat transfer, although that’s a fairly large set of persons, too. I love pizza, pasta, and potatoes too much to give them up, and they’re all significantly easier to prepare on the fly for a party of 1 than most meats and other proteins.

    2. But you’re not saying that the total amount mean nothing, are you?

      No, I’m saying that counting them is pointless. If you’re eating the right kinds of things, you’re unlikely to eat too much.

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