Flow of Empty Calories Into Children's Food Supply Must Be Reduced, Experts Urge

STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

With over 23 million children and adolescents in the US overweight or obese, the risks for many chronic diseases continue to increase. An article in the October issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association examines the diets of American youth and finds some disturbing results.

"The epidemic of obesity among children and adolescents is now widely regarded as one of the most important public health problems in the US," commented Jill Reedy, PhD, MPH, RD, and Susan M. Krebs-Smith, PhD, MPH, RD, both of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD. "Most experts agree that the solution will involve changes in both diet and physical activity, in order to affect energy balance. For diet, this means a reduction in energy from current consumption levels…This paper identifies the major sources of overall energy and empty calories, providing context for dietary guidance that could specifically focus on limiting calories from these sources and for changes in the food environment. Product reformulation alone is not sufficient -- the flow of empty calories into the food supply must be reduced."

For 2-18 year olds, the top sources of energy were grain desserts, pizza, and soda. Sugar-sweetened beverages (soda and fruit drinks combined) provided almost 10% of total calories consumed. Nearly 40% of total calories consumed by 2-18 year olds were in the form of empty calories from solid fat and from added sugars. Half of empty calories came from six foods: soda, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, grain desserts, pizza, and whole milk.

There is no such thing as an "empty Calorie."

All Calories are created equal and contain 4186.8 joules of energy.

An "empty Calorie" is like an inch without length. It cannot exist.



There are no "empty Calories" and it is absolutely impossible for a food or beverage to be without nutritional value. There are 7 nutrients - fat, carbohydrate, protein, minerals, vitamins, water and alcohol.

You might have a gripe with how the Calories are distributed, e.g., you want more protein and less fat, but there is and can never be an empty Calorie or a food that is not nutritious since all food is composed nearly 100% of nutrients (with the exceptions of preservatives and the like).

The fact is, that if you fed the piglets and their parental pigs the same number of Calories but from different foods, the results would likely not be substantially different over the long haul.

There is one way to ameliorate the issue with a change in foods. That is to overeat Calories, if you are going to overeat Calories, in the forms of protein and carbohydrate instead of fat.

The reason is that the body uses more energy to convert protein and carbohydrate into body fat than it does to convert fat from food into body fat. The result is that you add less fat to your body per overeaten Calorie.

So what is meant by an "empty Calorie" to these researchers?

According to one source reporting on their study.

An empty calorie has the same number of calories - energy content - as any other calorie, but does not have the accompanying nutrients, such as dietary minerals, antioxidants, amino acids, fiber or vitamins.

Think about it.

The logical extension of their position is that if people overconsumed Calories from what they term "junk food," but took a multivitamin/multimineral pill (which has no Calories) to augment what is allegedly missing from the foods with "empty Calories," then they would not get fat. (Amino acids compose proteins - a macronutrient we are told Americans already eat to excess - and contain Calories.)

These experts remain STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!