[CH] Fattening lentils- NOT!
Kit Anderson (kitridge@bigfoot.com)
Wed, 14 Oct 1998 08:59:47 -0700
> So go look it up! Dry lentils are about 3.4 calories per gram, so if you
> have 100 grams of the things (about the least you could get away with as the
> basis for a meal), you're already up for 350 calories! On the other hand,
> mushrooms are only 0.22 calories per gram, so for the same number of
> calories, you could eat a kilo and a half of the things! Like I said, I'm
> keeping under 1000 calories a day, so such things really start to matter...
>
> jbc
Ahh..... but calories ain't calories. Calories are calculated when food
is burned and the amount of heat released is measured. An interesting
concept that has been around for a long time. Problem with this model is
people don't set their food on fire after ingesting. The body breaks
downs proteins, fats and carbohydrates enzymatically. The enzymes work
differently on different sustances.
The fire model assumes that all carbohydrates get converted to glucose.
This is incorrect. The more complex the carbohydrate the less it will be
broken down into sugars. Lentils are full of complex carbohydrates and
proteins, not glucose.
To make matters more complicated, the hormone involved in storage of
sugars, insulin, is produced by the pancreas in response to serum sugar
levels. But not all sugars are reacted to equally. Fructose elicts half
the insulin response as glucose, for instance.
So to say that lentils are fattening based on calorie content is not
only ancient science but so grossly over simplified as to be wrong. To
evalute food for its fattening ability (high insulin response) one needs
to look at glycemic indexes rather than calories.
--
St. Kit