The calories on your food label aren’t the whole story​

When you read the calorie count on a food label, do you assume that’s exactly what your body takes in?



I did, for years.



A new study suggests that isn’t quite true.



Researchers at Arizona State University have built a mathematical model, called DAMM, that follows food all the way through the highways and byways of your digestive tract. It estimates how much energy your body absorbs early on. And how much your gut bacteria add from whatever is left over.



That second part never makes it onto the label.



The calorie numbers on packaging come from a system more than 100 years old. Each gram of fat, carbohydrate, and protein gets an average calorie value, and the total is added up. It's simple, and it's useful. But it doesn't ask what happens to the food that reaches your colon, or what your gut bacteria do with it.



And they do quite a lot.



Fiber and resistant starch that your own digestion can't break down get fermented by gut bacteria into short-chain fatty acids. Some of those are absorbed into your bloodstream and used as energy.



According to the model, that adds up to about 140 calories a day. Roughly 7% of the usable energy in the diet came from what your gut bacteria made out of the food you couldn't digest yourself.



When the researchers tested the model against real measurements from a controlled feeding study, it came closer than the traditional calorie method.



This is the part I found most interesting.



In that earlier study, healthy adults ate either a high-fiber, less processed diet or a typical Western-style diet. The people on the Western diet absorbed about 116 more calories a day.



And the people eating all that extra fiber didn't report feeling any hungrier.



Which seems backwards at first.



The high-fiber diet gave their gut bacteria far more to work with, and they made more short-chain fatty acids. Yet overall, those people absorbed fewer calories. The upper gut took in less, and the microbes didn't fully make up the difference.



A few caveats are worth knowing. DAMM is a research model, not a diet plan. It was tested against one small study of 17 healthy adults, and the authors say it needs testing in more people, including those with metabolic conditions, before anyone uses it to tailor diets. And, I will add, 116 calories a day isn't a weight-loss strategy I know!



But what it does show is something I keep coming back to: Your food provides the raw materials. Your gut bacteria decide what happens next.



Which means fiber-rich, less processed foods aren't just "good for you" in some vague way. They're feeding a community of microbes that is doing real work on your behalf.



So, the next time you glance at a calorie label, remember it's only half the story. The other half is happening in your gut.





Yours for better health, naturally,

Here comes Thanksgiving, and my mind is still on that conversation with my niece a few years back, when I explained to her that nobody has to buy, prep, roast or carry the big bird anymore for our gatherings, since all the old folks are gone, and how we do things very casually now: tamales, salsa, guacamole, a traditional sweet potato dish, rice with flavorful additions, gravy if anybody wants to make it, beer and pumpkin ale, wine, iced tea, and desserts. The tamales, being in a masa shell, are their own dressing.

She was not up to date on what are now our established routines for quite a few years, because she doesn't live here in SA. She's in a town outside of Houston, so she isn't always here for holidays. We are looking forward to seeing her this year. So I'm remembering how she was a little crestfallen upon learning of our new casual ways, remembering aloud how you'd smell that roasting bird with the sage even outside the front door, before going in.

When I found out she was coming, I volunteered to have Thanksgiving here. Though I don't think it's my turn, nobody else has mentioned it. I want to bring back traditional Thanksgiving for my niece, but not the whole big bird. I want to make turkey wings and dressing. It's been so long, I'm having a hard time remembering how I used to make dressing. Cooking the stuffing inside the bird was not considered optimal. I remember these things:

A sheet of cornbread (so my shopping list includes a package of cornbread mix or a store made cornbread)
Chopped onion and celery, sauteed in bird fat, after the turkey was cooked and drippings available.
Salt and pepper
Sage was already cooked in the bird

So you crumbled up the cornbread, mixed in the sauteed onion and celery. Did you add an egg? I don't remember doing that. Then you patted out your mixture in a pan and baked it right before dinner, uncovered, to get the top crispy. While it was baking you made your gravy with turkey drippings. Hopefully the wings will make enough drippings for gravy.

Am I missing anything? I also have a bouillon cubes here in case I need to add more moisture to the dressing before baking, if the wings don't make enough juice.

A friend of mine makes two turkeys at Thanksgiving. She says one for the turkey and one for the dressing. Hmmm. I'll be doing a trial run of the wings before the holiday, so maybe I can save some juice and fat from that and chuck them in the freezer.