V is for Veggies

Low-carb and low-fat advocates disagree about almost everything and agree about this. Vegetables deliver a large volume of food, considerable fiber, water, and micronutrients for very few calories — which means they fill you up while leaving room in the day.

Calorie density is the useful concept here. Foods with lots of water and fiber per calorie let you eat a satisfying quantity of food without a large caloric load. This is why "eat more vegetables" outperforms "eat less" as a strategy: it works by addition, not deprivation.

The arithmetic behind it is simple: take the calories in a food and divide them by its weight in grams. That gives you calories per gram. About 100 grams of broccoli is roughly 35 calories, which works out to about 0.35 calories per gram. The same 100 grams of olive oil is roughly 880 calories, or about 8.8 per gram. Identical weight on the plate, twenty-five times the calories.

You never have to do this math yourself. It is worth understanding once, though, because it explains why volume and calories are not the same thing — and why a large plate of vegetables and a small handful of something dense can leave you feeling completely different while costing the same.

The practical obstacle is almost never knowledge. It is preparation and availability. Vegetables you have to wash, peel, and cook after a ten-hour day lose to anything in a bag.