When it comes to promoting low calorie snacks it appears that the magic number is 100. I have noticed that calorie counting has become a very popular trend in the diet industry. This has opened up a great opportunity for food processors to profit from this by creating low-calorie snack options. Unfortunately, many of these snacks are doing more harm than good. Let’s undress this low-calorie trend to see what’s happening behind the scenes.
First things first. What the heck is a calorie?
Before we dive into undressing these products, it’s important to make sure we fully understand what a calorie actually is and what it does in the body. I often hear people say that they are on a low-calorie diet, or that they are avoiding certain healthy foods (e.g. nuts, avocado, oil, etc) because they are high in calories. I’ve also heard people ask how many calories are in a specific food because they are determined to avoid high-calorie foods since they equate them with weight-gain and poor health.
I wanted to bust through these myths to show you just how bogus this way of thinking really is.
So, what is a calorie? In simple terms a calorie is a unit of measurement that indicates the amount of energy that food will produce in the human body.
Therefore, the more calories a food item has, the more energy it produces in the body.
Based on this explanation of a calorie you can see that calories are good! Not only are they good, they are essential for the human body. If we don’t consume calories, we won’t have any energy, and we won’t survive.
So if calories are so important for us then why does the ‘diet’ industry demonize calories and tell us to reduce them?
Great question! The important thing about calories is that we only need a certain amount of them. If we get too few calories from our food then our body can’t function properly. However, if we consume more calories than our body needs it has to do something with the excess calories. What it does, is it stores them as fat.
So as you can see, calories are VERY important, however, we want to make sure that we are consuming the right amount. Since the majority of people in North America consume more calories than they are using (or put another way, consume more energy than they are burning), we end up storing excess fat in the body. This is why the diet industry focuses so much on calorie-cutting. When we stop consuming too many calories we can start to burn the fat stores in the body and lose weight.
How do I know how many calories I should be consuming?
A quick way to figure this out is to calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). You can calculate yours by CLICKING HERE.
The BMR is a calculation of how many calories your body will burn if you stayed in bed all day. It’s important to make sure you consume that many calories because that is what your body needs to function. The more physical activity you do the more calories you should consume during the day.
Consuming the right number of calories is only half the picture!
I get frustrated when I hear people assessing the health of a food item solely based on the number of calories it contains. For example, you may have heard someone say that a specific food is ‘bad’ because it is high in calories. Or heard someone compare two foods and say one is better than the other specifically because it is lower in calories.
There is one more VERY important piece of the puzzle I need to explain so you can understand why this type of thinking frustrates me so much.
There are only 3 macronutrients when it comes to food. They are carbohydrates, proteins, and fat. When it comes to calories:
- Every gram of carbohydrate ALWAYS contains 4 calories
- Every gram of protein ALWAYS contains 4 calories
- Every gram of fat ALWAYS contains 9 calories
This is an essential part of the puzzle because it shows that when we see how many calories are in a specific food it is not an indication of how healthy that food is, it is just an indication of how many grams of these macronutrients are in the food, multiplied by the number of calories per gram.
The most important lesson here
The key takeaway I want you to get from this is that the number of calories a food item contains is not enough on it’s own to determine the health of that food. The most important thing to look at is the nutrient density of the food.
We want to make sure we are eating foods that contain a high amount of micronutrition (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and enzymes) per gram.
For example, if you take 100 calories worth of Doritos chips (which is only a few chips) and compare that to 100 calories worth of apple (2 apples) you can see that although they are both 100 calories, you are going to get far more nutrition from the apples. The apples are going to be nutrient dense (meaning they contain high amounts of micronutrition per gram), where as the Doritos would be considered a processed food that is nutrient depleted.
The key is that if you only have a certain number of calories to consume in a day, it is important to make sure that you are getting as many micronutrients into your body without going over your calorie limit.
Often times people are only focused on weight loss as a goal. When they eat these low-calorie unhealthy foods and they start to see weight loss, they get excited. However, even if weight loss is important to you, your health should always be number 1. Being skinny but sick is no fun.
The choice is yours. If your health, how you feel, your energy levels, skin, etc are not important to you and all that matters is the weight on the scale then only focusing on calories could do the trick. However, if you do care about your health and how you feel, then focusing on eating foods that are nutrient dense is going to rock your world in a good way!
Why I hate these 100 calorie snacks
Food manufacturers wanted to profit off of the diet industry and it seems that 100 calorie snack packs was one of their tactics. The marketing that goes along with these products makes you believe that these snack packs are the solution you have been looking for. You can now have the cake, cookies, chips, etc you want but in a portion size that leads to you weighing your dream weight. Often times people feel better about themselves just by buying this product!
The problem is that these are the same manufacturers who spend millions of dollars trying to make their products so irresistible that you CAN’T just have 1 bite, 1 cookie, or 1 snack pack. These products are specifically designed to convince you to eat more, more, more. After finishing the last bite you will likely find yourself licking your fingers and reaching for another. If you are able to hold yourself back, you may feel emotions of deprivation. One part of you will be feeling like you really want more and the other side is telling you that you can’t have it because you need to lose weight. This is not a very enjoyable experience. These products don’t satisfy us and as a result can lead to weight gain, poor health, and emotional eating.
In addition these products may contain only 100 calories per package, but they are also nutrient-depleted, bad for the environment (because of all the excess packaging), and on top of that the companies charge a premium so you actually pay way more per gram of food.
My recommendation is that you ignore the marketing hype. Turn the package over and read the ingredients. If it contains food that is processed, refined, nutrient-depleted, synthetic, or artificial, leave it on the shelf. Instead, aim to fill up your calorie tank with foods that are going to actually fuel your body, not just feed it.
If you found this interested, I would love your help spreading the word! You can use the social media buttons below to let others know why these products should be avoided.
