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.

English Muffin Surprise

• The eggplant man is a sorry, soppy soap opera fan.


• Jules Verne ate and egg in its shell in just sixty seconds.


• Pink posies draw like a ground moose strewn at the roadside.


• Unilever makes the best pumpkin pie.


• Bored, boring bores bore twins and whores as they all do their chores and bake fluffy s'mores.

Mind your own dubious veracity, Brakeman.

Calorie Sticker Shock: Yey Ignorance!

New York is the first city to implement a law which forces chain restaurants to post calorie counts in the same size and font as that item's name for every food they serve. This has caused a situation, regretfully referred to as "sticker shock", in which consumers are now aware of the calorie counts of the foods they consume at chain restaurants.

Now, you have to be wondering where I'm going with this. Am I going to bitch about counting calories? Am I going to rant about passing legislation to more easily provide people with information that is already available? Am I going to hunt and peck through the article to find stupid quotes and so lash out at Nora Cara and her "But you pick up a little muffin with your coffee, and it has 630 calories in it? That’s a bit extreme!" idiocy? Nope! I'm going to rage about this:

“Some people actually tell us we should take off the labels, because it discourages them from ordering what they want."

What's the phrase used to indicate an intentional avoidance of information in order to avoid guilt, liability, reality? Oh yeah, it's called willful ignorance. And it is stupid.

Calorie information is everywhere. Moreover, foods objectively exist independent of the information provided about them. So that 510 calorie muffin is 510 calories regardless of whether or not someone knows it. The only thing which changes with these new labels is the degree to which people are informed.

How would removing the labels at this point solve the "problem"? How could a person even maintain that veil of ignorance? Once an individual learns that their corn muffin is 510 calories (zomg!) how the fuck will removing that information from the nametag remove that information from one's mind, from one's awareness? Have New Yorkers finally reached the mental status of goldfish, with a short-term memory of 15 seconds? Hell, maybe this even indicates that New Yorkers have lost their concept of object permanence. If upon removing the 510 calorie label that information is gone what happens if they leave the restaurant? Does the restaurant still exist when they aren't directly looking at it? If the muffin ceased to be 510 calories when the label was removed maybe the restaurant ceased to exist when they left!

If we assume that New Yorkers do, in fact, have long and short term memory and this "remove the sticker mentality" is meant to only enable consumption of foods yet to be seen how the fuck is "I don't want to know" a sensible mentality? Whence the problem with an awareness of calorie counts? Is it guilt? Do they think that weight gain is a cognitive process, that awareness of calories makes one fat? Maybe staring at the numbers just makes them feel fat; they've lost their ability to manifest their Will To Power and as stupid, lambish, drones they're subject to fuck if I know what and that somehow makes them feel bad. For whatever reason they would rather bury their heads in their own ignorance than be confronted by the reality of the situation.

What's most infuriating to me is that grasping at ignorance; willfully deluding one's self and avoiding information.

But then Fowler noticed that the waiter had handed her friend an old menu, which didn’t have calorie counts on it.

“You got a menu without anything on it?” she asked her friend. “Can I have yours?”

A corn muffin is 510 calories regardless of whether or not you know that. If you want to eat a corn muffin eat a fucking corn muffin. If you want to avoid 510 calorie muffins then don't eat a corn muffin. If you, in your idiotic, delusional, confused little pissant mind want to eat a corn muffin and think it healthy despite reality? If you are grasping for uninformed ignorance? If you are trying to trade for that menu without the calorie counts so you can order whatever you want and NOT THINK ABOUT IT? Crawl into a hole and die. Or, at the very least, do not recoil and act offended when they come to sheer you.

Pull your head out of your ass. Shut the fuck up. Objectively assess the world in which you live. ACT ACCORDINGLY! Eat healthy if you want to be healthy. Ignore nutritional information if you do not care. But don't piss around exchanging menus so that you can maintain your uninformed ignorance and convince yourself that your super-brownie-fudge-vein-splosion is healthy just because it has milk in it.