Meet the MegaJoule
It’s a unit of energy, like the calorie. The megajoule (MJ) is equal to one million (106) joules, or about 240 Calories (I’m rounding a bit)
So here’s why I think the Joule is valuable – smaller numbers.
The MJ may help simplify everything to do with dieting.
We give average dietary suggestions that men aim for roughly 10 MJ per day, and women aim for 8 MJ.
Foods would list MJ per serving and MJ per container to the nearest 0.5 MJ (so not only would you know that a ‘serving’ of Haagan Dazs has 1 MJ, the amount you’re probably going to eat – the container – has 4 MJ)
So a typical candy bar would be 1 MJ, most of the StarBucks Blended drinks would be around 1 MJ, with some being as low as .5, and some being as high as 2.
A McDonalds Angus with Bacon and Cheese with a large Fries would be about 5.5 MJ.
So the math instantly becomes easier.
Next a ‘diet’ would start with the simple advice of subtracting 2 MJ from your daily recommended intake.
Your BMR? It would be somewhere between 4 and 7 MJ (depending on height, weight and sex)
It’s a simpler number (also the one most used in diet research) and it accurately reflects the fact that we are discussing the energy content of our foods, while the calorie has for some reason lost this association with energy and has become something much more …mystical.
Hopefully if we adopted the MJ, it could help simplify the whole ‘calorie counting process’..since counting to 10 is infinitely easier than counting to 2,400….
It would be easier, which sadly is probably why we won’t do it.
Of course, we would also run the risk of having someone say ‘all MegaJoules are NOT equal’, at which point just about every physicist and engineer would lower their head and raise the white flag on the entire nutrition industry… 😉
BP
