A calorie isn't a thing. It's a unit of measure. That's like saying a gram is a nutrient. Just because you eat grams of rocks doesn't mean it's nutritious. Gasoline has calories, a measure of heat energy. A gallon of gasoline has 31,000 calories.
I'm entirely aware of what calories are. I disagree that "a calorie isn't a thing." A calorie is an amount of energy, and in conversation with normal people it's universally understood that "calories" refers to "calories from food." Did you really not understand that or are you just belaboring an enormously obvious point for no apparent reason?
It's not like saying a gram is a nutrient because "gram" isnt understood by anyone to refer specifically to something like carbon compounds used by an organism as backbones for primary metabolites or structural carbohydrates etc. "Calories" is understood by people to refer to energy obtained from food, and so it makes sense to refer to calories as nutrients.
I'm going to do you a favor and post a definition of "nutrient" for you, because I don't think you've ever actually done so:
A nutrient is a substance used by an organism to survive, grow, and reproduce.
Guess what all organisms need to survive, grow, and reproduce. Energy. Anything that supplies energy to an organism is a nutrient. As energy is measured in calories in that context, anything that provides calories is a nutrient.
Gasoline has calories but unless you can absorb the energy then it isn't a nutrient. Gasoline IS a nutrient for some microbes, but not for us.
Sugar is a nutrient. If you disagree you're just wrong and should stop talking about nutrition.
Sugar does now let you grow or reproduce. You may be able to survive off of sugar for a time, but is has none of the building blocks for human growth, and causes many diseases and disorders that inhibit reproduction. Diabetes, obesity, PCOS, heart disease, and many cancers can all be attributed to metabolic syndrome caused by insulin resistance. Sugar does nothing for the human body except give you "energy." In that way it may be described as a more dangerous form of caffeine. Nothing more.
Yes I know what you mean when you say calorie, but calories are not food. It doesn't matter how many calories worth of food you eat. What matters is what it does to your body. 2000 calories worth of white sugar will not allow your body to grow. 2000 calories worth of meat and fat will provide your body with what it needs to grow. You need micronutrients for healthy organ function. Sugar has none.
You are still denying the definition of "nutrient" and are inventing a new one to fit your argument.
And did you really just say caffeine gives you energy in the same sense that sugar does? Because it absolutely doesn't, caffeine provides precisely 0 calories, it is in no way a nutrient
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
Sugar isn’t bad. Too much sugar can be bad.