# Death of the calorie | 1843

<https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie>

- Host: [1843magazine.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/1843magazine.com/)
- Saved: March 18, 2019 (2019-03-18T14:56:04Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/f717ddaaf91b/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/f717ddaaf91b.json

## What Jamie wrote

I've read so much on food, and it’s very clear that we have this false sense of understanding of how food works. [Michael Pollan](https://michaelpollan.com/) describes this well in "In Defense of Food". This article does a good job of breaking down the false illusion that precise calorie metrics give us.

> The calorie system, says Camacho, lets food producers off the hook: “They can say, ‘We’re not responsible for the unhealthy products we sell, we just have to list the calories and leave it to you to manage your own weight’.” Camacho and other calorie dissidents argue that sugar and highly processed carbohydrates play havoc with people’s hormonal systems. Higher insulin levels mean more energy is converted into fat tissues leaving less available to fuel the rest of the body. That in turn drives hunger and overeating. In other words the constant hunger and fatigue suffered by Camacho and other dieters may be symptoms of being overweight, rather than the cause of the problem. Yet much of the food industry defends the status quo too. To change how we assess the energy and health values of food would undermine the business model of many companies.

Maybe not rely on those labels so much.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT98: Weekly Thing #98 / Mar 23, 2019](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/98/), Featured Links 🏅

## Same host

- [Why do we work so hard? | 1843](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/64924f913a5b/) (1843magazine.com, April 3, 2016)
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- [How Turkish coffee destroyed an empire | 1843](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6af745bbb464/) (1843magazine.com, November 20, 2019)

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie