Here's a neat idea about heaty and cooling foods.  I keep it in mind if I feel short tempered and choose a cooling food when making a choice, it's probably hokum but maybe the mindfulness helps.
http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/heaty.html

Also the converting thing, could it be about diabetes?  I have a family member who has diabetes and he says learning about a diabetic diet is strange.  Almost all foods count as proteins or sugars.  It's not just that diabetics should avoid sugar because you have to sugars to live, that's what your body makes energy out of (and protein I guess you make parts out of, or something).  But with diabetics if you get too much sugar- coma, if you get too little sugar-coma.  

I have read that gifteds might be similar to diabetics in food consumption because excess of thinking takes calories to operate, but it's not an active calorie usage,  it's kind of tricky.

Youth lives by personality, age lives by calculation. -- Aristotle on a calendar