8 suprising facts about calories!

Since many of us are on the topic of calories, I found an article (study published on Jan 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association) sort of related:

8 surprising facts about calories:
1. Why We’re Getting Fat
The average American eats 300 more calories daily than in 1985. Added sweeteners provide 23 percent of the extra calories; added fats provide another 24 percent. Eating 300 extra calories a day for a year will pile on about 31 pounds. (Math hint: you have to eat 3,500 extracalories to gain one pound.) What’s more, one-third of Americans are getting nearly half of their daily calories from junk food, according the USDA.

2. Exercise Machines Lie about Calories

For those regularly go gym, take note! Don’t count on your treadmill to tell you how many calories you’re burning. A study from the University of California, San Francisco, found that, on average, exercise machines overestimate calories burned by 19 percent. The errors ranged from seven percent on a stationary bike to 42 percent on an elliptical machine. For a more accurate count, experts suggest entering a slightly lower weight. You can also get a rough estimate of how many calories you’re burning per mile of running by multiplying your weight by 0.75. Multiply your weight by 0.53 for an estimate of calories burned per mile of walking.

3. Foods with Negative Calories
The idea here is that your body burns more calories in digesting certain foods, like celery, than the foods provide. Sorry. It’s just not so.

4. Fidget Away 350 Calories a Day
Lore from the famous fidgeting studyhas made the rounds since 2005 when a Mayo Clinic researcher showed that lean people burn 350 more calories daily than overweight people. That’s true, but twiddling your thumbs won’t do it. The research actually showed that those lean people move more—they pace, they take the stairs, they spend two more hours a day on their feet than the not-so-lean. Try that and you may find yourself a lot lighter next year.

5. Low-Fat Doesn’t Mean Low-Cal
Feeling virtuous because you’re buying low-fat versions of your food favorites? Here’s an eye-opener: two tablespoons of reduced-fat peanut butter gives you 187 calories. The same amount of regular has 191 calories. Half a cup of fat-free vanilla frozen yogurt contains 100 calories, compared to 104 for the same amount of regular.

6. Most of Us Are Clueless about Calories
According to a 2010 surveyby the International Food Information Council Foundation, only 11 percent of Americans can accurately estimate the number of calories they should consume daily for someone their age, height, weight and amount of physical activity. Not you? Take this Pop Quiz: (1) How many calories are in two slices of pizza? (2) How many in a basket of chips at a Mexican restaurant? (Answers: 1) 1,000; 2) 550.)

7. Muffins v. Donuts
Which has more calories? That depends to some extent on the size of the muffinand the embellishments on the donut, but on average, the donut is likelier to be lower in calories, even if its fat content may not be desirable.

8. Serving Sizes Can Be Deceptive
It’s easy to be fooled by food labels, since some snack foods may look like a portion for one person, but list a calorie count based on three servings. That means you’re getting triple the calories you expected from eating the entire portion.For foods like potato or corn chips, a serving size may be as little as one ounce, and few of us have the willpower to stop after such a small portion