Are Calories Important Anymore.

 Do Americans still need to count calories? Are they even vaguely important. No, according to  new study. This will definitely change the way American see food and eat.

Regular contributor Kim Severson wrote about this new phenomenon  in yesterday's New York Times Wednesday section, Calroes have been a part of American life for the last century or so. However the calorie is older than that and was used to explain the energy  burned by early made steam engines. thanks to French scientist Nicolas Clement .It only became attached to food in the 1880;s. It was Wilbur Atwater, a Wesleyan chemistry professor who applied the theory to food to help poor families get the most nutritional foods. Some modern day food scientists still use a modern version of that era's essential equipment , the calorimeter. This is burning food to calculate their caloric worth,People embraced this new idea that food fuels bodies the same way as a new invention of the era - the automobile was fueled by gas.This caught in a long with box scores It helped in World War One telling diners what to eat that would be equivalent to the red meat, sugar and flour that were being sent to the troop sverseas..Dr Lulu Hunt Peters, a California pathologist ran with this , writing about calorie restriction and how healthy being thin was.

It didn't help that the Roaring Twenties brought in the wafer thin flapper look followed by decades of Hollywood starlets having almost zero waistlines. Fat , once considered a sign of wealth was now considered unhealthy(and rightly so). Diets like the cabbage soup, Pritikin Atkins and now the Paleo arose,It also didn't help that Oprah Winfrey also had  been on various diets, telling her fans, urging her fans to count calories back in the Eighties. They too joined  he rin low calorie high carb diets .Oprah outlines her struggles in a new book :"Enough. Your Health. Your Weight and What It's Like to be Free". Her co author is Dr. Ania Jastreboff. It redefines obesity not as a personal failure but as a Neuro metabolic disease made worse by umtraprocessed food,lack of sleep, little exercise and stress. She says that calories are just a piece of information. They are a way  in which to easure energy within a given nutrient, but they don;t tell people about the nutrient itself. Just follow the new guidelines. Stay away from the ultra processed and ea t more protein and dairy. Eat nutrient dense food that will satiate for hours.

Is the calorie dead? Not now. It will be as the science os reassed and hew guidelines come out. The best bet is eat more fruits and veggies. Live healthy. That's all that tmatters.