Here are just a couple of reasons why calorie counting as a “diet” is seriously flawed.
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When is food actually “in” you? As it traverses through the body, is all the food and all the calorific content “in” you, or is only some of it actually transferred to your cells and the rest of it is pushed out as waste. - Obviously the latter - so if you are counting calories what are the exact amount of calories being absorbed by the body?
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Given the above, Is the measurement on the side of the pack accurate?
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What then are the actual usable calories of any given foodstuffs?
The caloric availability of foods is not accurately represented on any packaging - that is not by error or omission it is because it is very difficult to calculate - It does not account for how absorption varies based on the type of food or the individual who is consuming it.
The most common way of determining calorific content - the bomb method (burning it essentially) was developed in 1878 in Paris and was originally designed as a test for gunpowder.
So the calorie measurement on any given food labelling is basically wrong. Certainly not something to base a diet on.
And how many people here have built a bomb calorimeter? One. Me :). The cone is far better, much more controlled. Ah heat release measurements through oxygen depletion. The one wing of science I do understand 
Same test. You can measure the heat release of most things by burning them Peanuts are ace
Yes of course - I was interested to know if you used it for food or something else?
We built them and sold them round the world to fire test labs / military etc. We didn’t test for customers but we did test the gear we built if that makes sense? In fairness more building products commercially but you could still easily measure the calorific content of say a cheese sandwich with or without pickle.
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I once tested the calorific value of a mars bar and a marathon bar (now snickers i think), I can not remember the results but they were the same as on the packets within experimental error.
Yeah, just burn them under a known volume of water and calculate the losses does the job. GCSE level as I remember.
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Was in a public environment lab with the ‘bomb’. Official test.
One thing I want to consult the members here: Does consuming milk or dairy products contribute to your increase in weight? I found out that I am very likely to increase weight when drinking milk even though I do not deviate much from my diet (or even subtract say, a piece or bread) from it.
Dairy is one of those products I have never understood why humans consume it.
Ask yourself this question, what other animal continues to consume milk after being weened and which animal consumes milk from other animals?
Because it’s bloody tasty? Butter, cheese, cream, stone cold full fat milk:
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What other animals cook their food? It’s a naturalistic fallacy.
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I agree it is tasty, but from a nutricinal perspective I don’t really understand why humans are the only species that does it when all of the nutricinal benefits could be gained elsewhere
There is no other species capable of animal husbandy.
And also, who was the sick fucker that saw a cow nursing it’s calf and thought “fuck yeah, I wouldn’t mind me a bit of that!” ? 
It an interesting one that. I choose not to eat meat but will still eat dairy (mainly cheese) and eggs. I gave up meat in 1993 and haven’t missed it at all. I used to eat a bit of the qorn/fake meat stuff for a bit but don’t even do that any more… It all comes down to personal choice/preference/outlook.
For me one of the things that annoys me the most is when people say they NEEEEED meat and sometimes. they don’t even call it meat, they just say I neeed PROTEIN! Well you don’t “need” meat (or protein via consuming meat). You can have it but you don’t need it to survive!
I need bacon and steak and that need transcends capital letters
yes, yes, my bad - just irks me and yes, we all have needs!
