The World Cancer Research Fund has found a new cause for worry: we don’t know much about the calorie content of foods we eat.
Well, apart form one brief period – about which more anon – I have never paid any attention to the calorie content of the food I eat or prepare for the family, nor can I see that there is any use or need in doing so unless you have some specific problem which needs adjustment to your diet, & specifically your calorie intake. But that’s because I think that my old fashioned nutritional education, from school, Guides, womens magazines & most of all family, gave me a much more solid & sensible set of rules to go by. I don’t doubt that things are different today.
Just to show willing I have been trying to take note of the calorie content of foods that I have been eating – just those that are prepared by others, I am not going to go down the road of using food tables to work out the calorie count of meals prepared at home.
The results have surprised me a bit. Mainly because there is so little relationship between the calorie content of food & how full it makes you feel.
Exhibit A: 1 cup latte + 1 chocolate muffin = 655 calories
Exhibit B: 1 cup tea + 1 crispy chicken & bacon wrap = 505 calories
There is no doubt which would leave me feeling more like I had had a proper meal, one that will easily last me through to teatime without flagging. I would count myself (not in a good way) as having skipped lunch if all I had had was coffee & cake.
The simple calorie comparison hides the important difference – that higher quantities of protein & (non-sugar) carbohydrates are offered by the more filling food.
The thing is, though I have never tried it, I don’t think even 2 lattes & 2 chocolate muffins (which would provide more than half my GDA for calories) would assuage my hunger & make me feel full; just sick & needing to lie down for a bit rather than get on with some work.
