Re: Food Calorie question

From: zuuum (newsgroups_at_only.ok)
Date: 08/06/04 

Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 08:25:42 GMT

"Some Guy" <bc76@midmaine.com> wrote in message
news:667d0677.0407160531.68477f3c@posting.google.com...
> Long ago, I watched an episode of Mr. Wizard about Calories where he

[snip]

> He then went on to explain that measuring the heat from such a
> reaction in an insulated Calorimeter was how the Calories in food were
> measured.

The common use of the term "calories" actually refers to Kcalories or 1,000
cal

> Pretty cool. However, if that is the case, what bearing does that
> have on the Calories obtained by eating the food? I'm sure cellulose
> has tons of calories, but I would not get fat by eating hay.. Same
> goes for Olestra, and probably for lots of stuff that people eat.
> What is a 'Net Carb' anyway? ;-P I see ads for low carb beer! Isn't
> alcohol a carbohydrate? Isn't cellulose a carbohydrate?

Cellulose is "fiber" We do not convert fiber to storable/usable energy, so
it has 0 calories in any quantity.
Even "soluable fiber" is 0 calories.

Beer is mostly water, so it is a simple marketing trick to state "lo-carbs"
LOL, I was seriously considering having bumper-stickers made that read..
"lo-carb" It is the same ploy as labeling something 92% fat free instead of
8% fat content. It is double-talk!

>
> Wouldn't doing the 'burn with strong oxidizer test' on uneaten food,
> and then later after it had been - erm - excreted, be a much better
> way of determining how many nutritive calories something really has?

Nope. But there IS the factor that if an individual has some impairment to
digestion or metabolism of foods eaten, the caloric intake (not ingestion)
will be less than the potential calories.

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