"I am the Allower of my own Wellbeing"

A monthly newsletter written by Sherry Dell, PhD, CN

Volume 1, Issue 12
June 2008

Sample List of Empty Calorie Foods

Sample List of Nutrient Dense Foods

What exactly are empty calories (1)?  Empty calories come 
from highly processed foods.  They are made up primarily of 
poor quality sugars and fats.  In comparison, nutrient dense 
calories come from whole foods in their natural, 
straight-from-the garden or straight-from-the animal form.  
Some examples of processed foods high in empty 
calories and low in nutritional value are soda pop, candy bars, or potato chips.

To be a bit more specific -- if you compare a nutrient dense, baked potato with the empty calories of a bag of potato chips with equal calories (100 calories each), you will find that the baked potato contains twice the amount of dietary fiber (1.61 g of fiber, while chips contain 0.75 g of fiber) and four times more vitamin C  (13.7 mg of vitamin C in baked potato and 3.4 mg in potato chips). 

So technically speaking, an empty calorie has the same energy content as any other calorie.  What it doesn't have is the accompanying vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, fiber, etc. that are found in whole foods. Drinking a can of soda pop, for example, gives you the same burnable energy fuel as eating any other food that has 200 calories.  And herein lies one of the primary problems with empty calories.  As far as your body is concerned, when you drink a can of soda pop or eat a candy bar, your body simply registers the intake of calories.  When calories come into the body, the body reduces its urge for more calories by reducing appetite.

For a period of time, then, your appetite is satiated.  If you happened to have that soda pop BEFORE you ate a nutrient dense meal, the odds are you won't have much appetite to remind you to eat the good stuff.  And if you happen to be very young (under the age of 21), the odds are even higher that you won't have your intellect as a back-up system to kick in and override that lack of appetite.  You'll just go merrily on through the day, until the next time your appetite does kick in.

And your appetite will kick in.  Your cells did not receive the macronutrients they require to do their daily work from the soda pop, so the body has to keep asking for more food.  If this time, you grab a bag of cheetos around the time you probably should have sat down for a complete meal, the same course of events is likely to ensue.  Again, you'll have little appetite to draw you to the good stuff.

If you are a parent who has trouble getting your children to eat their meals, at this time in history, the odds are good  that empty calories are the culprit.  We have come to call this syndrome "the fussy child" or "the bad eater."  But just cut out all empty calories for two or three days and see if appetite doesn't return.  Even better, add a bit of exercise before meals, and see if the children aren't racing you to the dinner table.

Over time, the main problem with empty calories shows up: subclinical malnutrition.  Now, this wont be the kind of malnutrition we see in starving countries.  In fact, this kind of malnutrition can even be present in an obese body.  Or in a skinny fat person (this is a body with all the health conditions of the obese person but without the weight).  It is the kind of malnutrition that comes from ingesting calories but very little nutrition.  

The cells need protein, high quality, high fiber carbohydrates, and essential fatty acids every day.  In fact, they need these macronutrients three times each day.  That's why we call them macronutrients.  The body cannot produce them itself.  They must be provided through eating.  If the cells do not get these nutrients, they must "make do."  They have to keep the brain, heart, liver, and other high priority systems running to maintain life.  So what nutrition there is, will go to these organs first.  Bones, teeth, skin, hair, eyes, hormones, etc. may be your best first warning system (because these systems aren't immediately required to maintain life).

More importantly for most of us, malnutrition shows up as health symptoms such as pain and fatigue.  Eventually these kinds of ailments are given disease names such as depression, migraine headaches, irritable bowel, gastric reflux disease, sciatica, etc., etc.  It is simply put, impossible for the human body to maintain balance and health without the building blocks it requires from nutrient dense food.

So the problem with empty calories is that even though they may seem like fun, they are very harmful to health and longevity.  Be wise and keep them truly as treats in your diet (and remember the definition of a treat is something rare).

(1)  Michael Jacobson, head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, coined this term in 1972.