[CH] More on the great lentil conspiracy
J.B Cattley (jbc@mpx.com.au)
Thu, 15 Oct 1998 22:04:32 +1000
>> 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.
Yeah, this always bothered me. One wonders why people can't live on coal,
for instance, or magnesium filings...
>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.
It does rather depend, though, on the actual analysis performed. I believe
that some institutions actually have more advanced equipment than the bomb
calorimeter... As any decent list will give amounts of starches, sugars,
cellulose, protein, etc. it might be reasonable to assume that people have
actually taken this into account. Or not.
>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.
Hmmm... although they also have a lower energy rating...
>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.
The other way if looking at it is to realise that they are pulses. Seeds,
doncha know. Little energy packages for the developing plant. Ever made pea
soup? All that lovely soluble starch. Mmm.
Sounds iffy already, but the real kicker is that they are one of the more
commonly cultivated staple foods throughout history. People don't generally
go to great trouble to grow crops that don't give you much return. Or at
least, the ones that do tend to die out, like the fabled celery farmers of
the lower appalachians...
jbc