Our local food writer Steve Barnes has a column in today’s Times Union about the challenges of calculating the nutritional content of recipes, and the implications for requiring restaurants to share that information about items on their menu. Barnes points out that accurate calorie counts from a lab are expensive (hundreds of dollars per item). The approach is scientifically fraught anyway, as the amount of chemical energy in a food doesn’t necessarily translate directly into the amount of energy a person’s metabolism can extract from it (and people’s metabolisms tend to vary as well).
Barnes then explores the difficulties of calculating the amount of calories by adding up the calories in the ingredients in a recipe. It’s time-consuming work, even if you can find accurate information for all of your ingredients. It also requires you make the recipe the same way every time (“always 6 ounces of veal, not 6½, 1 tablespoon of oil, 4 ounces of tomato sauce and so on”), which he points out is “antithetical to the way true chefs work.”
As someone who has struggled with my weight, largely due to my enjoyment of food (both cooking it and eating it), I can empathize. The only times I’ve had success controlling my weight have been when I’ve employed a calorie counting app. That worked quite well when I was single and largely eating the same handful of foods, most of which were from restaurants with calorie counts (or where a “close-enough” estimate—like 500 calories for a slice of pizza or basic deli sandwich—would suffice).
But as an enthusiastic home cook (and father of four kids), the amount of restaurant food I consume regularly is pretty small. I do most of the cooking at home, and while I do rely on several regular dishes, I also rarely make things the same way twice, and I seldom measure my ingredients. Trying to input a recipe each time is onerous at best, and most food apps don’t handle the idea of serving size very well (just how many “servings” did my pot of chili actually create?).
So while I support the idea that we should be able to understand the nutrional content of what we eat, I recognize the burden that puts on independent restaurants, particularly on those who really focus on food as a medium for creativity. I don’t have any answers here, beyond some vague hope that if we focused more on elevating and savoring the natural flavors of food, rather than relying on fat, salt, and sugar, we might not have to worry about counting calories so precisely.
One thought on “Counting Calories”
Maybe what you are leaving out is also very important. I don’t see that many foods with ultra processed ingredients when I visit. I’m listening to Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Mighty Red and its truth telling about what sugar beet farming has done to the Red River Valley, and I’m thinking it might be time to eliminate sucrose/table sugar from my diet and cooking as much as practicable.