About 30 years ago a young cardiology doctor called Robert C. Atkins came up with a revolutionary diet plan he named after himself.
The basis of this plan was the idea that we are not getting fat from the fat in our food. How else, he said, would we explain the obesity in the United Stated, where there are so many low fat foods?

The culprits, he uncovered, are the carbohydrates. Those building blocks turn into glucose and if we do not use all of that energy on physical activity, it turns into fat and accumulates in our bodies.

Therefore his diet is based on a few or no carbohydrates at all. You can eat as much proteins (meat and animal products) as you like and you can eat as much fat as you like, as long as you avoid carbohydrates you will lose weight.

We are told that in order to stay healthy we need to check the nutritional facts on the back of boxes of food we buy. But do we understand what they really mean? Here’s a short description.

Calories

– The amount of calories in a certain food is a way to measure how much heat will be released while burning that food. A man needs about 2,000 calories a day, a woman a little less depending on their activity levels. Calorie amount is given so we will know how rich or dense the food is so we can calculate how many calories we eat.