re: When you lose weight it's inaccurate to say you've burned more calories than you take in.

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So weight loss causes global warming?

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I'm doing my part.

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When you lose weight it's inaccurate to say you've burned more calories than you take in.

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So you watch one shitty, pointless TED talk on Youtube and you're ready to change the whole paradigm?

We measure calories because you have to be in an energy deficit to get your body to mobilize body fat. You have to be actively expending more energy than you are eating. Body fat is stored energy. We can measure the amount of calories a food has, and we can measure the amount of calories your body needs to maintain homeostasis. He completely breezes over this in the video, but it's the key part of losing weight. You don't just simply take in less calories and your body magically breathes out carbon dioxide; there's an incredibly complex process that your body uses to mobilize stored fat, break it down to fatty acids, and transport it to cells, where it can be used to produce ATP (among other things). That all takes energy, and the fat gives you energy. That is why we measure calories.

Two food items of the same mass could carry extraordinarily different amounts of calories within them because of the varying amount of energy our bodies get out of the food.

How would you propose measuring food intake by mass? How much mass is too much? How much mass is too little? How do we measure the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen you're breathing out?




If you want to watch real science on fat metabolism, here you go, straight from someone who has a PHD in nutritional science:
LINK

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How would you propose measuring food intake by mass? How much mass is too much? How much mass How do we measure the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen you're breathing out?

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By using "indirect calorimetry", commonly used in metabolism and nutrition research.

"Indirect calorimetry is a technique that measures inspired and expired gas flows, volumes and concentrations of O2 and CO2. allows measurement of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production. non-invasive and accurate. the equipment used is also known as a metabolic cart."

LINK

Is that a feasible solution for the average person, in their home?

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Not necessarily. The point is maybe we're looking at measuring our food intake in the wrong terms. Maybe we should be looking at in term of mass in versus mass out. That is eat less in grams than you excrete out as CO2 and water.

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Flaw: consuming 1 gram of protein, 1 gram of sugar, doesn’t correlate directly with losing/gaining 1 gram of weight

I’m no scientist, but if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight. Period.