Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Great Calorie Debate -- A YOUNG biophysicist weighs in

Hat tip to Colby Vorland (@nutsci) via Twitter:  New fuel for the calorie debate

This is the blog of one Carson Chow -- half of the dynamic duo who set one Mr. Gary Taubes straight for once and for all about glycerol-3-phosphate -- and routinely puts the man to shame.  Oh ... but let it never escape your mind that Chow is *young* ... I hear he's even more *young* than I am *female*!!

In any case, Chow picked up on something that I missed in my obsession with the statistics.  The average TEE's measured by doubly labeled water were:  LF / LGI / LC =  2812 / 2937 / 3137 (by FQ) and = 2767 / 2926 / 3013 (by RQ).  The average caloric intake was 2626 calories per day.  This was less than each of the average TEE's for each diet by either measure.  By a minimum of 140 calories per day, to over 500 calories per day.   On average, everyone would have been in caloric deficit and lost something over 12 weeks, yet they didn't lose weight.  Heck, I suppose that's something for the CDS sufferers to hang their hats on.   Chow seems to attribute this more to error in TEE measurement, and I'll add that cheating cannot be ruled out either.

Oh ... interestingly enough, they reported energy intake as is customary, Mean (SD) -- 2626(686).  But no such transparency for EE's which are reported Mean [95% CI Range].  Sigh.

And oh again ... re-reading, it was the other half, (rumor has it he's still young too), Kevin Hall, that picked up on this. 

No comments:

Post a Comment