I don't have any idea what Naturopathic Medicine is, but if you have a PhD in any field related to science then you should have had some physics and biochemistry in your curriculum. Anyone completing these courses shouldn't have your misunderstandings.
Calories are different in the way that they are processed.
What does that mean? It makes no sense.
A calorie is a measure of the amount of energy. It is always the same no matter what.
Are you trying to say the amount of energy you get out of a calorie can be different?
We know that the breakdown of fat requires a different pathway than the breakdown of carbohydrates. We know the breakdown of protein utilizes a different pathway than the breakdown of fat and carbs. The efficiencies are not the same for all of these processes. This is understood but it doesn't change the fact that a calorie is a calorie.
Different amounts of ATP's will be formed for each step - on a carbon basis. Burning a calorie of fat will not form the same amount of ATP as burning a calorie of carbohydrate. As I said, different efficiencies.
A person can chow on 1500 calories in one sitting, not eating the rest of the day and they will not lose weight. I saw it in my practice. Once they split it up and graze, they will. Same calories.
This has nothing to do with whether or not a calorie is a calorie. This is an anecdote and you have no way of knowing how small meals may have affected these individuals. Maybe the 1500 calories consumed by the person in one sitting weren't absorbed as efficiently as those consumed in small meals. You'd have to measure the amount of calories defecated to know for sure. I wouldn't want to do that either. The utilization of calories may be more efficient. It may not be. You're drawing conclusions based on your observations but you don't know enough details to draw any conclusions -- any conclusions that matter, that is. But here they are.
Before I could enroll in graduate level biochemistry, I had to first take (and do well) courses in chemistry, nutrition, physiology, physics and so on. We were taught that a calorie is a measure of the amount of energy and that it is always the same no matter what. That's the way it's defined. We were also taught that you cannot get something from nothing. That being true, if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. It is really very simple. I don't understand why people work so hard to complicate it.
Like I said, do a little study in actual nutrition.
Start with Pediatric Diabetes and the diet connected with it.
A starch calorie is not the same as a protein calorie to the body, my FRiend. By taking it down to thermodynamics, you overlook how the body reacts to it. People work hard to complicate it, because it’s much more complicated than you make out.
If all we needed was a formula of “calorie in/calorie out” and understanding that the average human needs 2000 calories to maintain weight, those people who have lived for years on 1000 calories a day (linked in 111) would have starved to death. It’s what they ate that kept them alive and healthy.
Burning it on a dish is not feeding it to a human.