Their premise, that no one knew this, is wrong. Peter Attia had a whole post on this, http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/...d-state-part-ii , where he makes the point that CO2 and Water are the products when the Gibbs free energy is minimized.

Nope, I'm making it too complex. The historical method to find "how many calories are in something" is to burn it. Burning it produces CO2 and H2O. Wait a second, even children who read about global warming know this, i.e. here.

I just read what they quoted again, "convert our missing mass into heat or energy." What did they think we thought, that we were converting our mass into actual energy, like in a nuclear reactor?

Hrmph.