When is a calorie not a calorie? Dr Giles Yeo, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge in the UK who has been researching obesity for more than 20 years, says that much of what we think we know about calories is wrong.
‘Calorie information is everywhere,’ he says. ‘But it’s all based on lousy science.’ What matters, he says, is not how many calories a food contains, but how many of those calories are available for the body to absorb, which is known as a food’s ‘caloric availability’.
In his book , Dr Yeo explains that it is not the number of calories listed on a label that matters when it comes to losing weight, but how our bodies use the calories from that food. He says ‘caloric availability’ is influenced by how a food is prepared and how we digest it. The further away from its original state it is by the time you eat it, the more calories are available for your body to store.
