Skip to content  Experts explain the right way and wrong way of
counting calories to lose or maintain weight.  Counting calories
is a complicated business. Fat, carbs, protein, sweets -- are
all calories created equal, or are some better than others?
Here's what the experts have to say.  The History of Calorie
Counting  People haven't been counting calories forever (though
some days it may feel as if you have). The idea became popular
around the turn of the 20th century, according to Jonny Bowden,
PhD, CNS, a board-certified nutritionist and author of Living
the Low Carb Life: Choosing the Diet that's Right for You from
Atkins to Zone, and The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The
Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why. At
that time, scientist Wilbur Atwater noticed that if you put food
in a machine, called a "bomb calorimeter," and burned it, you
could measure the ash and heat to find out how much "energy" was
released and therefore how much "energy" was in the food. The
idea caught on, an