 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion GroupsEnglish UsageBritish EnglishESL Teaching Learnglish.com Contact UsLink To UsSearch & Site Map |
Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006a calorie is a calorie is a calorie
When someone says, "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" what is he or she trying to say? Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? Thanks. In our last episode, <1163392232.096034.186410@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, the lovely and talented fairycat broadcast on alt.usage.english: > When someone says, > "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" > what is he or she trying to say? That calories are just as fattening regardless of their source. That is, for the purpose of weight reduction, a calorie from fat is equal to a calorie from bread, and each is equal to a calorie from lean fish or from a vegetable. There is some debate on this issue. The most convincing argument I have heard that a calorie is NOT a calorie is that the standard method of measuring the caloric content of foods does not represent the actual degree to which the calories in various foods can be absorbed by the body. The accepted scientific view, however, is that a calorie IS a calorie (that is, that all calories from all sources have the same effect in weight loss or gain). > Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie?  SignatureLars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> <http://myspace.com/larseighner> War On Terrorism: Joe McCarthy Brigade "The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead -- and may well mount a fifth column." Andrew Sullivan, _The New Republic_ > When someone says, > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? Yes. Some people think that calories from so-called health foods are different from junk foods. This statement says rather emphatically that they are both the same. SignatureFranke: EFL teacher & medical editor Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan. Unmunged email: /at/easypeasy.com "Impatience is the mother of misery." >When someone says, > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > >Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? Sort of. Whether the word is "calorie" or "crime" or "infidelity" or "whatever", the reiteration is intended to mean that there aren't "good" whatevers and "bad" whatevers. There are only whatevers. In this case, it doesn't make a difference if the calorie is in chocolate cake or carrots. If you consume something with calories in it, you are taking in calories. SignatureTony Cooper Orlando, FL >>When someone says, >> [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >"whatever", the reiteration is intended to mean that there aren't >"good" whatevers and "bad" whatevers. There are only whatevers. There is good cholesterol and bad. >In this case, it doesn't make a difference if the calorie is in >chocolate cake or carrots. If you consume something with calories in >it, you are taking in calories. SignatureCharles Riggs >>> When someone says, >>> "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" >>> what is he or she trying to say? >>> Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? >> >> Sort of. Whether the word is "calorie" or "crime" or "infidelity" or >> "whatever", the reiteration is intended to mean that there aren't >> "good" whatevers and "bad" whatevers. There are only whatevers. >[...] > There is good cholesterol and bad. And many doctors want us to raise our good and lower our bad. Just eating the right food is a job these days. SignatureMaria http://www.familyhomefront.net/ There's only one 'n' in my email address, and it's not in my first name. > >>> When someone says, > >>> "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" > >>> what is he or she trying to say? First of all, we need to recognize that this an (altered) quotation of something so famous (a generation ago) as to have become a cliche: "a rose is a rose is a rose," by Gertrude Stein. Secondly, in the present "postmodern" era, this may also evoke another famous quotation (cliche) from Sigmund Freud: "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar." This was uttered as a corrective to the sequence in popular thought. 1. Certain objects secretly symbolize or represent other things (one of Freud's discoveries.) 2. Therefore any cigar is secretly suggesting a penis. Both quotations insist that (even in postmodern times) what philosophers call the Ding an Sich (thing in itself) is more real than the social uses to which other minds redirect it. In the context of discussing diet, the "calorie" statement means that eating too much (and not eating "the wrong things" or the wrong mixture, or some other fad) is what makes you fat. SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) [...] > Both quotations insist that (even in postmodern > times) what philosophers call the Ding an Sich > (thing in itself) [...] Googling idly to see if "Ding an Sicht" (which you also see) was an error or something completely different, I came across the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech ("frae the knawlege an sicht o mankynd"), which looks interesting and, per the sample, surprisingly readable. http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/ A sample, by Iain W D Forde: CHEPTIR ANE The Grunstanes Ma mither's cryed Sairie. Afoir shae wes mairriet on Hugh Brecham shae wes cryed Sairie Grunstane. Whan, wiouten onie wird, ma faither lowpit the kintra, ma mither bak-chynged ti hir maidin nem. Shae telt'z at hir guidman wes nou a tratour, brigganner an liear an at ma brither an masell suid alter our signators ti Grunstane. Bot A wuidna, an wul aye be kent bi the nem ma faither gied me, Frizell Brecham. Ma brither John follaed ma mither. John isna o ma bluid, ye ken. Born i Efrika, he wes wantin kin, sae ma mither an faither adopit'm whan he wes bot a spruit. John aye gangs Mither's gate tho A dinna wyte'm fur't. He wuid bene a sterved orphant gin mither hedna taen'm unner hir weing. Nou he's a beig, sonsie loun an mair clos ti me nor onie ither buddie i the warl. >Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? Except, of course, when a calorie is a kilocalorie (as in nutrition), and then you get into the various flavors of calorie, which are defined by different starting temperatures for the notional water being heated, which in turn are why the scientific community now near-universally uses joules. 1 kcal = 1 Cal ~= 4.2 kJ Of course, for those of us who learned our physics in obsolete units, we may well still fall back on them. I can never forget that the ideal gas constant is 0.0812 (L*atm)/(mol*K); I have no idea what it is in the currently fashionable units. Similarly, I remember the heat of vaporization of water as 540 cal/g, not 40.657 kJ/mol as my Rubber Bible has it. (Apparently my 540 is a few calories off -- or perhaps that's my molar mass of water, 18.02 g/mol.) -GAWollman SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness > >Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? > [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > Bible has it. (Apparently my 540 is a few calories off -- or perhaps > that's my molar mass of water, 18.02 g/mol.) Bomb TNT eq is defined to be 1 kcal/gr. So a kiloton is exactly a teracalorie. Don't know which sounds more threatening, Jan The J. J. Lodder entity posted thusly: >> >Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? >> [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] >Bomb TNT eq is defined to be 1 kcal/gr. >So a kiloton is exactly a teracalorie. I guess that's why it was called "Fat Boy". > The J. J. Lodder entity posted thusly: > [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > I guess that's why it was called "Fat Boy". Ha! But the first one was Little Boy and the second was Fat Man. SignatureJerry Friedman The jerry_friedman@yahoo.com entity posted thusly: >> The J. J. Lodder entity posted thusly: >> [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > >But the first one was Little Boy and the second was Fat Man. Oops. Once they saw what Little Boy did, they thought they'd better change it. Besides, Fat Man had more calories. > When someone says, > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? The form derives from a modestly famed poem by Gertrude Stein--see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_is_a_rose_is_a_rose_is_a_rose Regardless of Stein's poetic intentions, the phrase--with whatever noun one is concerned with used for "rose"--has come to mean that a thing is what it is: that is, that it is not something more or greater, that we are to take it in its simple sense. In the use cited in the subject line, the writer is trying to emphasize that various fad diets that say things like "calories don't count!" miss the mark: a calorie is a stark fact of life, and the calorie content of foods determines how they will affect weight gain or loss. (Whether that is so or not is irrelevant: it is what the writer is saying.) Thank you so much all. :) > When someone says, > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? Except for negative ones, if you believe in them, Jan > When someone says, > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Is it just an emphasizing the fact that a calorie is a calorie? Yes. It is a modification of a famous saying "A rose is a rose is a rose", which means approximately "How else could I describe a rose? All that you need to know is that a rose is a rose." As others have pointed out, a calorie is a calorie in the purely scientific sense, but the statement becomes false if you're talking about food, because of various complicating factors. In particular, the nutrition people use the word "calorie" to mean what a physicist would call "a thousand calories", so a more accurate statement might be "A calorie is a kilocalorie is a megacalorie" which might or might not be an explanation of something that I've observed: even if the exercise bike says that you've burnt off 200 calories, you'll walk out of the gym heavier than when you walked in. SignaturePeter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet address could disappear at any time. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2012 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.