Published On: October 15th, 2013/Categories: Diet & Nutrition/7.9 min read/

Not Just a Macro

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 50 years, your diet will in some way be influenced by the all important macro. You be might be keeping your carbs low, your protein high and your fat moderate, all to help you achieve some health related goal. But is it that simple?

A “macro”, being short for a macronutrient, is simply a grouping of a number of similar food constituents. There are three macros – Protein, Carbohydrate (aka “carbs”) and Fat. Protein would include all the proteins and amino acids that are found in foods such as meat, eggs and dairy. Carbohydrates classes together all the sugar based nutrients, whether they be simple sugars like glucose, lactose and fructose, or chains of sugars such as starch. Fat groups all the oils and fats together.

So when we look at an item of food such as an egg, we can apportion its nutrients and therefore its calories into three sections. An egg would contain protein to help the feotus grow into a chicken and carbs and fat to provide energy. Most foods contain some combination of the three macronutrients.

Now the great thing about these three food groups is that diets can be constructed around them, with great results. For instance the ketogenic diet is very low carb, low protein and high fat. Many bodybuilders will divide their required daily calories into macro partitions and construct their meals and timings accordingly, such as protein+fat for breakfast, protein+carbs post workout and carbs before bed. This has led to the concept of IIFYM “If It Fits Your Macros” which is an approach to eating where the subject decides on a macro ratio of calories, e.g. 40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fat, and then they are free to select what foods they eat as long as the total macronutrients match the goal. So in theory you could have all your protein from chicken breasts, carbs from table sugar and fat from chicken skin. Within the IIFYM world there is much debate about how free people should be with their food choices, with some believing they can eat poor quality food and still do well; and others emphasising the importance of food quality within the IIFYM framework.

The IIFYM debate raises a big issue – In the world of diet and nutrition, is a macro an oversimplification?

I would say YES.

The fundamental problem with macros is that they are just a grouping of similar but different constituents. The protein from a steak is different to the protein from a bean. The fat from a coconut is different from a peanut. The carbohydrates in a bowl of jasmine rice are different to the carbohydrates in a bowl of basmati rice. And when I say different, these can be massive differences with some being healthy and some being toxic.

Protein is an interesting example as many people think 50 grammes of protein is the same wherever it comes from, and that for bodybuilding it’s all about the quantity of protein and not quality. They are wrong. Leucine is an amino acid that can be found in abundance in red meat and eggs, but not in beans and oats. Leucine is important as it stimulates protein synthesis (the body’s creation of muscle), a bit like the cup of tea that gets the builder going in the morning. But the builder still needs his bricks, and that’s where the volume of protein comes in, which could be from other sources. But if you don’t eat leucine then you could have a large supply of protein in your body (the bricks) and nothing telling your body to build muscle with it (no tea for the builders), so the excess protein just gets used as fuel.

Fat is a huge topic, but if we focus on some extreme examples then it makes everything a lot clearer. Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT) are an abundant fat within coconuts. This fat is so stable and unreactive that it can be left at room temperature for months without spoiling. Within the body it is one of the only fats to be able to be used directly by the brain and it’s virtually impossible to get fat from eating it. Linseed oil on the other hand is so reactive and unstable that if left outside it can self-combust and spoils easily. Within the body, these unstable fats which oxidise easily cause major health issues such as systemic inflammation. Trans-fats are an artificially made fat which have even more detrimental effects to human health. Every other fat you can think of sits somewhere on this spectrum, usually having some good element and some bad element to it. (e.g. Omega-3 fats are considered very healthy but can still be toxic when taken to excess or left to spoil).

And when it comes to carbs, clearly the body will handle a starchy jacket potato differently to a pint of orange juice. Even orange juice compared to a whole orange is different, even though it’s the same thing, just structured differently. when you juice a food it becomes much easier to eat and digest which means you process it differently (aside from the issue that you’ll often eat a lot more of it).

 

A macro isn’t just a macro, and a meal of steak, potato and broccoli will always be healthier than a meat feast pizza, even if the macro numbers suggest they are the same.

Macros are a useful guide, but we need to think well beyond just counting macros and focus on food quality, micronutrients and the type of macro we’re actually wanting to eat.

 

 

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About the Author: Carl Gottlieb
I'm the trusted privacy advisor to leading tech companies, helping them gain maximum advantage through the right privacy strategy. My consultancy company Cognition provides a range of privacy and security services including Data Protection Officers, in-depth assessments and virtual security engineers. Get in touch if you'd like to learn more.

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