Calories: You cannot "has"!
I have a package of eggs here according to which one egg has 70 calories. I also have a container of grapefruit juice indicating that 8 fluid ounces has 90 calories. But did you know that both the package of eggs and the container of juice are propagating a lie? Did you know that, in fact, eggs and grapefruit juice do not have calories? Did you know that no thing, at all, ever, has calories?
I just learned this yesterday, and it fucking pissed me off. Because, apparently, nothing instantiates the predicate "calorie", because "calorie" is not a predicate to be instantiated in the way that, say, "brown" is instantiated in particular piles of shit.
A calorie (with regard to food, a kilogram calorie) is a unit of energy the base unit of which is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius, which is about 4.18 joules (kilojoules when pertaining to food). What is a joule? Well, a joule is the energy exerted by the force of one newton acting to move an object through a distance of one metre. What is a newton? A newton is equal to the amount of net force required to accelerate a mass of one kilogram at a rate of one meter per second per second.
Do you understand any of that? Neither do I; because there was never a Magic School Bus episode about it.
Here's the thing, though: It is not the case that an egg has 70 calories. Rather, 70 calories is the amount of energy "given off", in a very loose and imprecise sense, by the egg when the egg is made subject to cellular respiration, which is this:
C6H12O6 (aq) + 6 O2 (g) → 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l)
ΔG = -2880 kJ per mole of C6H12O6
Whatever the fuck that is.
If one were to cut open an egg one would not find calories; calories would not be discerned by way of any of the five senses. Hell, one probably could not even derive calories from the eternal essence of eggness. Eggs do not have calories. Or, as it is written on the wikipedia page for Food Energy:
Nutritionists usually talk about the number of calories in a gram of a nutrient, but this implies that the food actually 'contains' energy. It's better to say that each gram of food (fuel) is associated with a particular amount of energy (released when the food is respired).
j'accuse!!!
If you read the 38 definitions for "has" none of them are applicable to the "relation" between calories and eggs, calories and grapefruit juice, calories and anything. Calories are not had, calories are not contained within, calories are not instantiated. Rather, calories are a way of talking about eggs with regard to a particular metabolic process of human beings. Independent of that process? Calories are entirely inapplicable to eggs.
So, here is another example of how anthropocentric jackassery skews the articulation of ontological entities within the world to be subject to human beings. We do not discuss eggs in themselves, eggs as they would be unperceived, unthought, unencountered by human beings, but rather discuss eggs in terms of human beings. Despite the fact that "has 70 calories" is a completely false, completely untrue, completely nonsensical predicate to apply to an egg, we fucking do it anyway. Because, well, we only care about, we only think about, eggs with respect to their utility towards a particular metabolic process of human beings. Eggs do not have calories, but with respect to a particular metabolic process we can consider eggs in terms of calories. So let's just put "70 calories" on the Nutritional Information sticker, because fuck the definitions of "contain" and "has"; we're anthropocentric jackasses who just want to know what eggs are to us.
It's the fucking BP Oil Spill all over again. We can't run a car on pelicans, we can't build a computer out of sea turtles, so fuck 'em! We are anthropocentric jackasses who only care about ourselves and our immediate needs. So fuck language, fuck the definitions of "contains" and "has", fuck nounemal eggs, let's just say that an egg has 70 calories because we're so fucking great that we can just do that. Is it true? No. Does it subvert one's understanding of eggs and their qualities? Yes. Is it completely butt-fucking stupid and a needless skewing of reality towards the needs of human beings irrespective of the actual, true qualities of the thing in itself? Sure.
But, man, can you imagine how big Nutritional Information stickers would be if they accurately articulated information such that it was true? Fuck making big stickers; let's just lie; let's just say that an egg has 70 calories.
Despite the definition of "has".
Despite the definition of "calorie".
Despite the ontological qualitites of eggs.
Despite truth.
Despite anything.
It's just easier this way.
8 comments:
You mean....
You didn't know?
No. No I did not.
it was not a good day when I learned this.
Does it give you any comfort to take note that eggs are only so packaged for the purpose of human consumption, and that the application of this Calorie possession abstraction is only carried out in the context of omnomnomnom?
I am fairly certain the episode "working out" might cover how calories are energy...
I think Working Out is the one where they go into her blood stream and use the air in the tires of the van to reoxygenate (sp?) the muscle.
I'm fine with the packaging as the packaging makes no claim as to the eggs themselves.
But when we are discussing the nutritional information OF an egg, I expect that information to pertain to the egg itself.
Any discussion of "the nutritional information OF an egg," I think you'll find, is always going to be in regard to how that egg is to be metabolized. And, since weasels aren't likely to be perusing the dairy case (and at any rate they'd, I would think, metabolize it the same way we would), it suits the purposes of the shopping public to have the labels marked in the way they are marked.
I believe that your frustration is that appearances make it seem that it would be possible in this instance for statements of ontological truth to be made on the packaging, and it is a standard working assumption of yours that making statements of ontological truth is always the best thing (and, ideally I fully agree with you on this point). But, given the situation in which you find the egg -- the enculturation of the individuals encountering the egg, the status of the egg (already divorced from its noumenal self) as a commodity, and the purpose for which Nutritional Facts labels are required by the FDA, it ought to be clear to you that these labels would necessarily not be describing the egg per ipse, but rather some quality associated with the egg once ingested.
So the particular linguistic articulation on a Nutritional Information sticker gains part of its meaning from a context within which the sticker is printed? So the meaning of, say, "Calories 70" comes partially from, or is contained within, or is created by, or something something, the contextual understanding of the thing being for consumption. I, if I understand the context, understand "Calories 70" to mean "with respect to a particular kind of digestion for a particular kind of biological entity..."
Well I'm not comfortable with that at all.
It's not as if the context denotes the truth of the situation. There are probably people, as I was, who think that there are 70 calories in an egg. And for all practical concerns....that's not "true"...but it sort of works to achieve a particular kind of end. One could act "as if" an egg contained 70 calories and sort of fluff about.
I think that even with regard to practical concerns, day to day living, there is some merit in articulating a more truthful account of the situation.
This requires thought.
Post a Comment