How do they provide energy if they’re devoid of any nutrients? How can the body story them as fat if they don’t provide any nutrients whatsoever? In general, I’m confused.
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Whenever you eat something, your body has some choices:
-Turn it into energy
-Store it as is
-Use it as is
-Make something out of it
-Get rid of it
-Take it apart first and then get rid of it
“Empty calories” is a made up and imprecise term to refer to foods that only or mostly give your body the first option. It’s really subjective though, and its meaning is more popular than scientific. But how do we subjectively choose?
Even when our body takes the first option, it doesn’t always do so at the same rate. A common misconception is that the body can use fats, proteins, and carbohydrates as fuel for our cells directly. This isn’t quite true. In reality, the only thing we can use for energy is glucose. Not even all glucose either, but a specific type of glucose where everything is facing a certain way (all glucose in nature is this type, but still, it just shows that the human body is rather picky).
Whenever our body wants energy from something that isn’t glucose, it makes it into glucose. This is easiest to do for starch, since starch is just a bunch of glucose attached together. All we really need is amylase, the enzyme present in saliva. Fats are reasonably simple too (the process for this is called ketosis, and its where the name for the keto diet comes from. When you eat no carbs, fats are the body’s second choice.) Amino acids are the hardest to use. We have to take most of the molecule off, then put 3 backbones in a circle and add the glucose components on. Pretty much making glucose from scratch at that point.
So even though protein could just as easily contain no nutrients as other foods, we don’t really think of beef jerky as “empty calories” because we take so long to get energy from it. Empty calories therefore usually refers to sugar, starch, or fat dense foods with a low nutritional value.
It really is a silly concept though, since these foods can easily be part of a healthy lifestyle. Really, we should be talking about how to balance our physical and mental health with a mix of food that’s good for us and food we enjoy.
By the way, if you were curious, examples of things we eat that fit into each of the categories above:
-Glucose
-Iodine
-Vitamin A
-Cholesterol
-Iron
-Alcohol, stevia, and really most things
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It seems most people are defining empty calories as sugar/fat calories but I would argue any more calories than necessary to reach your daily limits are empty calories as they will be stored as fat and sugars for future use which is no good. Ideally you want to to be consuming and using/burning roughly the same amount of calories daily. Too few consistently you lose weight too many consistently you’ll gain weight.
Calories themselves are energy, so they’re not inherently useless. However, the point people make when counting calories is to get your calories from nutrient-rich food. Fruits and veggies have calories, but they’re also loaded with stuff your body needs to function. Empty calories, coming from things like Coca Cola or cookies, are purely consumed for taste and give you a large sugar/fat input, but otherwise provide no (or minimal) benefit to your body from a nutrition standpoint. As a result, you’ll still need to be eating other foods to get your nutritional needs and simply be eating these foods in addition, leading to weight gain.
“Empty” calories are ones that don’t provide nutrition beyond just the calories in them. They’re just fat and/or sugar, without vitamins or other things that are good for you.
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