“BZHU and KBZHU – scary abbreviations. There were until recently. Now even Seryozha (Alena’s husband. – Approx. Ed.) talks to me like this: “For the evening, please, protein and some long carbohydrate.” But recently, protein could only be found in the eye, and a long carbohydrate is generally some kind of chemical element, and it is not clear why it is long.
More recently, everyone has been obsessed with calculator applications that calculate calories, grams of protein, fat and carbohydrates from food. Hence the name – KBZHU.
Why count all this? To know how many calories you have eaten and whether you have exceeded your daily intake of protein, fat or carbohydrates. This is straight hard hemorrhoids! And most importantly – meaningless. Well, will you be doing calculations all your life? You just need to think about what you are eating.
“But someone created this counting system, and, apparently, for a reason?” – you ask. Of course, someone created and for a reason.
Calorie as a unit of measurement of energy has been studied and distributed in scientific circles in Europe, but America taught the whole world how to count calories.
During World War I, amid global food shortages, the American government needed a way to encourage people to cut back on food intake. The United States at the time launched its world’s first “scientific diet” for Americans, based on calorie counting. In the decades that followed, as leanness became fashionable, almost all diets were based on cutting calories.
Today the Americans have changed their positions dramatically. “When you eat quality and proper food, your body will do the rest for you! And you don’t need to count calories and stick to some numbers. “Says David Ludwig, endocrinologist, researcher and Harvard Medical School professor (Always Hungry?).
Ludwig explains that the problem is what we eat, not the amount of food. The problem is in unhealthy foods that cause special reactions in the body and make us overeat and get fat.
Processed carbs (chips, cookies, soda, crackers, white rice, and more) are quickly digested into sugar and increase insulin levels, which forces cells to collect calories in the blood and store them as fat, leaving the body hungry. This is why we can eat a large bag of chips or a slice of cake and still be hungry.