Monday, February 13, 2012
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What exactly is a calorie?

Published 02/21/10

Registered dietitian Jill Weisenberger once had a client who kept a puzzling food journal. The calorie counts were all out of whack. The woman's tuna sandwich had 33 calories. An apple: 144.

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Turns out the woman was mistaking a food-calorie book's index for a calorie chart.

It's not too far-fetched, seeing as few common health words are as baffling to us as "calorie." Calories are invisible, yet we try to count them and cut them. Food supplies them, but they're not nutrients.

"They're abstract," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, who says calories...

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