By Alejandro Angulo
Societies have prioritized eradicating environmental energy inefficiency. However, personal energy waste has consequences that affect our health. Calories are a measure of the energy that a particular food or drink provides us through the carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and alcohol they contain. Calories should balance the amount of energy we need to produce, but particularly in Western cultures, we consume more calories than we need.
The World Health Organization (WHO) established a generic calculation tool to determine the number of daily calories a person needs. For women it is 1,600-2,000, and 2,000-2,500 for men. However, two other factors must be taken into account: basal metabolism and physical activity.
Basal metabolism refers to the number of calories we burn on physiological functions such as breathing, eating, sleeping, and the actions of our internal organs. They are the calories that we consume at rest. You can calculate your basal metabolism (BM) with the following formula. Men need 1 calorie per kilogram of weight per hour. That means a man’s weight in kg x 1 calorie x 24 hours. Women need 0.9 calories per kilogram of weight per hour. That means a woman’s weight in kg x 0.9 calories x 24 hours.
Apart from the calories we need for our BM, we take into account the exercise we do through the day. Depending on one’s physical activity, multiply your BM by the corresponding figure:
Sedentary (without exercise): 1.2 x BM.
Light activity (walking, sports with low energy expenditure): 1.375 x BM.
Moderate activity (activities like running or dancing 3-4 days a week): 1.55 x BM.
Intense activity (swimming or cycling 5-6 days per week): 1.725 x BM.
Very intense activity (intense exercise daily): 1.9 x BM.
People who gain weight, suffer from obesity, or have health problems, such as diabetes 2, can attribute this to eating more food, i.e., taking in more energy through their daily calorie intake than they expend through exercise. Currently, people generally consume more calories than they need throughout the day. According to the WHO, 50-55% of our daily caloric intake should come from carbohydrates. Fat intake should be 30-35% (only 7% saturated fat), and protein up to 10%. With this balance, in addition to obtaining the energy necessary to carry out all our activities, we give our body the nutrients it needs.
The daily calories that we consume should come from good-quality products, and not through processed foods, which provide what are known as empty calories, because they do not provide energy. Recent research estimates that in the last 30 years, we have turned to consuming large amounts of processed, industrialized fast food, which has had consequences on our health. Our current caloric intake is now over 3,000 per day.
In recent decades, one of the most worrisome changes in our diet has been due to the increase in cheap and easily accessible foods, such as sugary drinks, meat products, and industrialized foods rich in corn syrup, sugar, and calories. Mexico ranks second worldwide in adult obesity, 10 times higher than in countries like Japan and Korea. A recent study by UNAM (Health and Food Culture in Mexico, 2019) noted that, “Obesity is a serious public health problem in Mexico. The immediate causes of this disease are related to energy balance, that is, more energy is ingested than is expended. In turn, there are underlying causes, such as changes in the traditional diet, the high availability and accessibility of processed foods, the high consumption of sweetened beverages, fast food, the mass marketing of junk food, and a sedentary lifestyle.” The report also noted, “Above all, the consequences of obesity lead to multiple pathologies, such as coronary heart disease or ischemia, which occurs when the arteries supplying blood to the heart become clogged, metabolic problems such as high blood pressure (hypertension) and diabetes (high blood sugar), and dyslipidemia, which is excessively high cholesterol in the blood. These conditions represent a great challenge for the health system due to the high cost of treatment and the increase in mortality due to these diseases.”
It is evident that the change in the food culture in Mexico has precipitated the health problems among the population: “Urbanization, modernization, and sophistication have frequently led to diets in which a large percentage of energy intake comes from sugars and fats and leads to a higher consumption of salt. These nutritionally negative habits that most people have acquired have influenced the increase in chronic diseases already described above, whose consequences, if not treated in time, can be fatal.”
The current diet does not take into account that health problems have complex causes that involve cultural, social, political, economic, environmental, and biological determinants. We must promote and return to the traditional Mexican diet, consume more fresh produce, and eat food prepared at home. We should move away from precooked, industrialized, frozen, or fast food, which are typical products of modernity, urbanization, globalization, and industrialization.
In conclusion, we are energetically inefficient (inefficiency = the inability to properly perform or fulfill a function) because we consume more calories than we need. Part of this excessive caloric consumption—hyperphagia—is presumed to be caused by an alteration in the mechanism that regulates appetite. It is clear that energy, health, and food are interdependent elements that act on our person and environment.
