Class 6 – Nutrition and Health – Fall 2019 – Chapter 4 in McGuire – Carbohydrates

Joseph Dixon ♦ September 23, 2019 ♦ Leave a comment

See article at:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(19)30173-1/fulltext#back-bib2

Board Presentation on 9-18-2019:

On the board I reviewed the reason I discussed the mechanism of fire and how it relates to energy in foods and how energy is conserved in humans.  Obviously, there is energy in the bonds of the fuel for a fire. That energy can be measured in a bomb calorimeter as was performed in the late 1800s by Rubner and Atwater.  Then experiments showed that energy is conserved in humans such that if 2,500 Kcal are eaten, then that 2,500 Kcal can be measured and accounted for in the human who ate it.  One of the ways to do this is by measuring the amount of oxygen consumed by a human who is performing some kind of work or activity.  Thornton realized that each liter of oxygen consumed was equivalent to about 4.7 Kcal (This is called Thornton’s rule).

In the second panel, I show the calculations you can make using the Atwater numbers.  Also, the average American diet consists of 50% of Calories from carbohydrate, 35% of Calories from Fat, and 15% of Calories from Protein. Of course, individuals can have much a distribution much different than this.