How to Give up on Counting Calories
You've got to be Kilo-ing me!
Let me ask you this: how many kilojoules do you burn in a day? No wait, how many kilocalories?
Oh, you still don’t know?
Yeah, me neither. And there’s a 0KCAL chance I’ll ever remember. This is the prominent part of a series of realities that have helped me quit a long-lived calorie counting habit.
I’m now eating totally blind!
How did I get here? Let’s start with the basics:
In Ireland, they use a different unit of measure for energy than we do in the United States. We use calories (lower case ‘c’) and they use kilojoules (KJ) and kilocalories (KCal). Kilocalories (upper case ‘C’) are closest to calories.
How close, you ask?
MedicineNet says: 1 “large” Calorie equalling 1,000 small calories. Scientifically,1 kcal or kilocalorie is equivalent to 1 large Calorie or 1,000 calories.
Are you with me?
1 calorie equals about 1 kilocalorie. Great. I can ignore the completely useless Kilojoules (KJ) number; and thank god because it’s as big as heart attack, and it’s always listed FIRST. If you casually glance down at a nutrition label you’ll think you just ate 1,500 calories in single bite of biscuit and never want to eat again.
Once you find the Kcal number you’re generally relieved but still haven’t completed your Irish maths homework. Yes, I put an “s” on Math - that’s what they do here. As if Math wasn’t enough already, they made it plural! There’s more than one!
Back to the calorie label.
Grab your calculator.
They give you Kcals in grams or milliliters of food, rarely in portions. Do you know what 30 grams of Rice Krispies looks like?
And the total grams of the box aren’t listed on the nutritional chart. So you flip the food package upside down and sideways and then upside down again to hunt for the microscopic font with the total number of grams in the whole package and work from there.
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably burned a few calories and can deduct those. But who has the time for more math!
Bottom line — come to Ireland to escape from gun violence, the downfall of democracy, and the burdensome knowledge of caloric intake. Meet you at the Pub!
The nutrition label in the US says how many servings there are in the package, so you don’t have to go look for the total grams. Do they not have that in Ireland/EU-land?
For someone who got a D in high school algebra (because the teacher couldn’t bear the thought of holding me back for another year of trying to penetrate my skull), Cal-culus was a non-starter. But you had me at “Kilojoules.” Great read!