Counting calories is definitely NOT the way to a healthy body. That's all marketing fluff. 500 calories from Macdonalds is not the same as 500 calories of fresh vegetables. And why did you put "quality food" in quotes?! The type of food you eat make a huge difference!
> 500 calories from Macdonalds is not the same as 500
> calories of fresh vegetables
You will find yourself in the "No True Scotsman" fallacy very quickly there. It is a microsecond of thought experiment to find 500 McDonald's calories that are better for you than a specific 500 fresh vegetable calories.
McD's sells fresh fruit bags, grilled chicken, all manner of salads that you don't need to add dressing to, and so on. But you want a specific example?
I give you the Ranch Snack Wrap® (Grilled), Artisan Grilled Chicken Filet, mostly because if you eat two of them, you're near the 500kcal (580) mark, macronutrient ratio breakdown by calorie being 25% protein, 33% carbs, 41% fat, which ain't bad at all. Sugar by weight is 2%, by macronutrient calorie breakdown is 6%.
Let's say you ate 7 of them(!?!?) to hit your daily intake, which would be dumb, but whatever: your salt intake is 2x RDA, and you're probably shorter than you'd like to be of fibre.
If you ate exclusively this item for your calorific intake for a month, you might find you were passing your poop a little uncomfortably towards the end, but you'd find yourself significantly more healthy than most of the Western world. Take a multivitamin once a week, and if you eat exclusively this for the rest of your natural life, your only real concern is going to be potentially raised blood pressure and you'll probably get haemorrhoids.
Now let us consider the humble rutabaga (or swede), a root vegetable, allowed by the NHS to count towards your five vegetables a day. At 86% carbs, and 10% protein, it's pretty unbalanced, but whatever. Oh, did I mention? It's 64% (SIXTY FOUR) sugar by calories. Try living off that for a week.
> How is that No True Scotsman in any way? Seriously?!
Sorry, I was pre-empting your response to this post where you find some reason that the Ranch Snack Wrap, fruit bags, etc aren't real McD's, and rutabagas aren't real vegetables.
Fine, I concede. The term MacDonalds may be too ingrained in my mind as a synonym to junk food.
I should have said "500 calories of sugar-rich junk food will not affect your weight and health in the same way as 500 calories of protein. Doing calorie maths is pointless for any relevant overview of your diet."
It seems a bit pedantic to be bothered by me bashing MacDonalds.
