Calorie Counting Conundrum

As many of you might have heard, McDonald’s started posting calorie counts on their menus across America this week. This move is garnering some praise for the fast food giant. Before we jump on the “McDonald’s is doing their part to combat diabetes and obesity” bandwagon, everyone should understand that this move simply preempts federal regulations that will require all restaurant chains with more than 20 locations to post calorie counts in their stores.  In essence, McDonald's proactively did something that will soon be required of them to do any way.  Marginally helpful, yes.  A selfless act of good corporate citizenship? Probably not.
 (If I sound a bit suspect of McDonald’s motivations, it’s because I am…)

If McDonald’s thought for one second that this would hurt their profit margins, they would never have done this voluntarily. The regulations aren’t expected to take effect for at least another year, so the Golden Arches gets the advantage of being first -- never a bad thing in the business world. The truth is that McDonald’s already knows this won’t make a difference in their bottom line… unfortunately it won’t do anything to curb our expanding waistlines either.

You see, McDonald’s is already required to post calorie counts in several cities where local ordinances require them to do so. Turns out, profits haven’t declined and the typical order hasn’t changed. According to McDonald’s, people appreciate knowing the calorie count, but it doesn’t stop them from ordering on average 725 calories per customer per trip – the same as the national average.

We could argue that the efforts to educate consumers in cities like New York and Philadelphia that mandate calorie counts in restaurant chains have not worked.  People simply don’t seem to care to make better choices.  We could also make the case that health conscious people just don’t eat at McDonald’s, but I think it goes much further than that… I think we are being given the wrong advice on a global scale with drastic health implications.

There is a real reason that posting calorie counts won’t make a lick of difference in our fight with obesity.

“Calories in versus calories out” is a common theme promulgated by nutrition experts in the United States. In fact, we are repeatedly told that in order to lose weight (fat), we must simply expend more energy and therefore burn more calories than we consume. This long-held belief makes intuitive sense.

My research tells me, however, that in this context, although it may be “technically” accurate, "calories in, calories out" is drastically over-simplified.

I recently read a great book called “Why We Get Fat” (I will be quoting and referencing the book often… so get ready). In it, the author Gary Taubes explains the difficulty in pin-pointing an exact number for energy consumption and expenditure. It is actually much trickier than the experts would have you believe.
Mr. Taubes points out in his book; it would only take 20 extra calories a day to gain two pounds of fat in a year. That might not sound so bad, but multiply those two pounds by 20 years and you will have gained 50 pounds of fat just by eating 20 extra calories a day – the equivalent of a quarter of a small orange! This same logic would also tell us that the reverse is true. If you under-eat by 20 calories a day, you will lose 50 pounds of fat over the course of 20 years. Do we ever see this playing out in real life?

I don’t know about you, but I actually know a fair amount of people who regularly overeat by conventional standards and they don’t gain an ounce. I also know people who exist on an extreme caloric deficit, read nutrition labels and exercise as prescribed, but cannot seem to lose a pound.

The mainstream media and nutritionists would have us believe that it is our fault… We don’t have enough willpower or we must be lying about how much we are actually eating. Additionally, we are told that we must be overestimating the number of calories we are burning through physical activity. But if you have to get it exactly right – to within 20 calories a day just to maintain – how is it even possible?

I intend to explore the validity of “calories in vs. calories out” argument in upcoming posts and see if we can’t make some sense of this complex issue.