The opportunity cost of food

What is opportunity cost and how does it relate to calories?

There is a ratio between how much cardio (burning of calories) you must do vs how much eating you can do. To eat more and not store it as fat (remain in balance) requires choosing between increasing cardio activity (become more active) or eat less. To enjoy food means to choose the foods you really like to eat but how do you choose and what role does opportunity cost play in this?

If we think of stocks then opportunity cost is technically the lost profits which could have been gained if someone chose a different stock. So if you had to choose between Apple and Amazon stock then the opportunity cost is the profits you missed from the stock you did not choose. The same applies to food where if you have to choose between the high calorie tasty food vs the healthy food then both have some benefit to your life but the opportunity cost of the food is what you miss out on. So if you decide to eat healthy foods 100% of the time then you miss out on a lot of potential flavor experiences (opportunity cost).

Are all calories equal? No

All calories don't have the same value. Nutritionally speaking a 2000 calorie diet for the day can vary from being very healthy to unhealthy. The same goes for the taste of the food. If you are going to choose a meal plan for 2000 calories then you may want foods which you like (which taste good) but then what about health? The ideal is to pick foods you like where most of the foods you eat are healthy but to reserve a percentage of those 2000 calories a day for foods which are just tasty. You can have donuts, coffee, a slice of cheese cake, even chips, if you don't put a major percentage of your calories into it.

If you have a problem with obesity the easiest thing to do is think about eating like you think about investing. If you wouldn't put all your life savings into one crypto which could very well be a scam then would you choose to eat Twinkies for all of your calories? MyFitnessPal can help anyone to form a nutrition plan and in the future we can expect blockchain technology might even reward people for being disciplined in this way.

What to aim for?

If you have the goal of psychological and physical benefits from eating then you must find the balance for you that allows you to enjoy eating whilst also getting the required nutrition within your calorie budget. You can decide if you want to eat more or less based on how you train. If you train by lifting weights then your body gets bigger (bigger muscles, bigger organs) and this will allow you to eat more calories (200-300 more per day) to support that growth. Once your body meets it's new set point (say if you went from 140lbs to 150lbs with muscle gained) then if your body fat percentage on the scale is around the same then your metabolism may have a new set point requiring more energy to maintain the muscle you built. The more muscle you have the more calories you require to maintain it.

This means if you want to eat cheese cake more often you have to become big enough that cheese cake supports maintenance of your current form rather than getting stored as fat. If a person never worked out in the gym (specifically they do not lift weights) then their body has no reason to require additional calories. At the same time if you don't really like having to eat a lot or don't like high calorie foods then it's probably easier for you to lose weight than to gain it. In this case if you just focus on eating the bare minimum to get exactly the nutrition you need each day it requires focusing on nutritional density in foods. Kale for example is nutrient dense and very low calories and in addition you can juice it.

So basically if you want to be bigger you can eat more but if you want to be smaller you can eat less. Health isn't determined by "weight" but is determined more by body composition. How much lean mass you have is what determines how much you need in energy to support keeping what you have. Most importantly, some ingredients in food are bad even if you limit intake (transfats and oils). So these should ideally be kept to as low as possible as the body doesn't know how to deal with transfats and oils cause problems when oxidization occurs.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
2. https://sci-fit.net/energy-expenditure-study-collection/