In Search of Calories

I buy only a few brands of frozen dinners. I choose products that are: free of gluten, dairy, soy; have no added MSG (or other ingredients that contain MSG); and are not too starchy.  They're handy to keep around for an emergency, especially at work.  For example, I might forget to bring my lunch and be too busy to pick up Chinese food, so I'll resort to heating and eating one.

They taste fine, they don't cause any strange reactions, and they don't make me feel hungrier than I was before I ate them.  But they are Too Small.  Everything I've found so far has fewer than 300 calories.  Assuming one of these is supposed to replace an entire meal, and assuming most people eat just three meals per day, the dinners are made for someone on a severely calorie-restricted diet of under 1000 calories.

I don't count calories, but I figure I need to take in 2100 calories each day to maintain my weight.  Dividing that into three meals, that comes to 700 calories per meal.  So I buy the dinners in pairs and eat two at "lunchtime," spreading them apart by two hours or so.  You could say I eat two lunches.  Why not?

It's unfortunate that calories have been blamed for obesity because it's just not true.  The culprit is any substance that causes inflammation or that your body converts quickly to fat.

Calories are units of energy.  In the food industry, the price of energy has been turned upside down as many lower-calorie foods are priced the same or higher than their higher calorie counterparts.  It's as if a gas station were to price the low octane mix higher than premium.

When I see "low calorie" emblazoned on something, I'm motivated to buy something else.