He Laughed When I Ordered The Salad, or More on Calorie Density

Last week I stopped by a restaurant, as I was out of town and needed to get a bite to eat. I spotted a health food restaurant that offered a giant buffet, including a salad bar where you could pay by plate size instead of by weight.

They had two different salad prices: small and large. I of course chose the large one.

Whenever the deal is "fit as much as you can on your plate for this price," my caveman instincts kick in, just like everybody else. So I started to pile an unrealistic amount of salad on that plate, filled with all kinds of veggies, some slices of avocado and other good things.

When I made it to the counter to pay, I thought I had a pretty big salad, but I still felt I could have piled even more on top of it all.

When the cashier saw my salad, he started laughing.

To my surprise, it was not just a pleasant, friendly laugh.

The guy actually started to laugh uncontrollably! He just could not contain himself and started laughing and laughing while making comments at my salad.

At first it was "wow, that's a really big salad"… and then he started gibbering nonsense. "Oh my Go… oh no, that salad, oh no, wow, oh man…"

I did not know whether I should feel insulted for being treated like a freak, or whether I should start lecturing him on the virtues of eating high-nutrient-dense foods.

But as he kept laughing more and more, I ended his party by looking at him straight in the eye, with the most serious Poker face I could muster, and asked him, "How much do I owe you?" trying to sound like I was a high-paid CEO talking  to a low class subordinate.

I could not believe that a health food employee would actually insult my salad!

At first, I was wondering if he was laughing so hard simply because I was taking advantage of their $7.99 plate of salad by piling more than most people would fit onto such a plate.

But then I kept thinking of other buffets where you pay by the plate, and all over the world I've seen people do the same thing: pack as much as they can onto the tiniest, cheapest plate possible.

There's a restaurant in my city called the "Mongolian Grill" where you can get a pretty good vegetarian stir fry. You take a bowl, and pile as many vegetables as you can onto it, and a guy will cook it in front of you on a giant hot plate.

At all of those restaurants, I've always witnessed people pack in as much meat as possible, and if they're vegetarian, as much veggies as they can possibly fit onto that plate, so much that sometimes stuff starts falling off it as they bring it to the counter.

So after this health food store employee laughed uncontrollably at my salad, I came to the conclusion that he was actually laughing because I was going to EAT such a big salad, not because he though I was ripping off his store.

In his mind, eating such a giant salad would be the equivalent of someone else eating a three-foot sub sandwich!

I've actually had similar reactions from people in the past when they saw the sizes of my fruit meal.

I was once interviewed by a local Montreal newspaper that was doing a feature on raw food diets. When I told the reporter that I was often eating 8 to 10 bananas for lunch, he also started to laugh uncontrollably, as did the filming crew. It seemed so odd to them that I would eat that many bananas at once!

Let's stop for a moment to talk about caloric density.

Less than two years ago, I was in Hawaii for my Honeymoon doing a dinner cruise with my wife. We signed up for an organized package, but asked for a special meal to be prepared for us.

As we sat down to eat, I looked at what the "regular" meal looked like. People received a seafood appetizer (shrimp), followed by lobster and rice, then steak and potatoes, then finally a big chocolate cake dessert.

I took out my iPhone and started analyzing the caloric density of that meal. I calculated that most people ate anywhere between 3000 and 4000 calories, not including the alcoholic beverages, for that meal alone! That's almost twice as much as most people should eat in a single day.

On the other hand, our meal of salad, fruits and vegetables was less than 800 calories, and we had way more food on our plates.

The Importance of Caloric Density

Caloric density is one of the most important concept in health and weight loss.

It's simply a value of how many calories are in a certain weight of food, either by pound or kilo.

If you eat foods with a low caloric density, you get full much faster because you have more volume to deal with, and more fiber to keep you full.

If you eat foods of high-caloric density, you get fat because you tend to eat more calories than you need.

Study after study has shown that caloric density is the most important factor in making a diet work long-term.

Why?

Because if you eat foods of low caloric density, you get full much faster, and it's literally impossible to overeat and gain weight.

For example, lettuce has a caloric density of only 100 calories per pound, while olive oil has 4000 calories per pound.

Now you'll say… yeah, but nobody just eats olive oil!

True! But whenever you add olive oil to a food, you increase the overall caloric density.

For example, a famous study showed that when they fed a group of people the same food but without the added fat, people ate the same amount of food, but consumed fewer calories, and lost weight. But, the other group being fed the same food but with extra oil sneaked in gained weight. They were taking in extra calories without realizing it!

At the same time, if you add lettuce to any meal, you lower the caloric density.

That's why they've found that when people had a large fat free salad or a big apple before their meal, they ate less at the meal and were able to lose weight. That's all because of caloric density!

Let's take a look at the average caloric density of different food, in terms of number of calories by pound.

Food

Caloric Density Per Pound

Fresh raw or cooked veggies
100


Fresh raw fruit
250-300


Cooked Starchy Vegetables, Intact Whole Grains
450-500


Legumes and Beans
550-600


Meat Products
900-1000


Dried Fruit
1200


Processed grains and Flours (even if made from whole grains)
1200-1500


Cheese
1800


Nuts and Seeds
2800


Cheese
1800


Oil
4000

 

Keep in mind that this is an average across a category. For example, we know that bananas contain more calories per weight than apples, but overall fruits have a similar caloric density.

Looking at this table, you'd be tempted to only eat vegetables, as they contain only 100 calories per pound. It's important to note that nobody can live on just vegetables, and that you'd get so hungry on a diet of just vegetables that you'd eventually break down and eat something else! However, you want your diet to contain plenty of raw vegetables by weight.

The concept of caloric density is to look at the overall caloric density of your meals.

If the caloric density of your food is below 400 calories per pound, you will lose weight no matter what you do!

Many traditional diets of long-lived people have a caloric density of around 600 calories per pound. If the caloric density of your food is below 400 calories per pound, you'll be able to maintain a healthy weight without counting calories and even without exercising.

When people laugh at you when they see the size of your meals, tell them about caloric density. Tell them that you can eat as much of these foods as you want because of their low caloric density!

The next time someone laughs at my salad or my fruit meal, I'll point at their sandwich and say:

"Laugh all you want, but did you know that I could eat two salads like this and still eat less than 600 calories? Your sandwich alone is 800 calories and I know you'll be hungry in two hours, looking for a chocolate bar, while I'll feel full because of all the delicious food I ate. That by the way, is why I'm slim and you're not!"

Okay, maybe I won't say the last part. But I'll think it for sure…