A question about donut nutrition (LOL!)

Factual Questions
1

Glazed Do-Nut
Serving Size 54.34 g
Servings per Container 1
Amount per serving

Calories 217
Calories from Fat 10
% Daily Value*

Total Fat 11 g 18%
Saturated Fat 3 g 14%
Trans Fat 0 g 0%
Cholesterol 0 mg 0%
Sodium 186 mg 8%
Total Carbohydrate 25 g 8%
Dietary Fiber 1 g 2%
Sugars 16 g 0%
Protein 3 g 0%

I copied the above nutrition information from a big donut retailer website.

A question about donut nutrition information:

How can 11 grams of fat only equal 10 calories from fat? Is that a typo? I thought a gram of fat had about 10 calories, so that values should be 100 or 110, right?

Also, if there are 0 grams of tans fats and 3 grams of saturated fats, why is there a total of 11 grams of fat? Where are the other 8 grams hiding?

2

Presumably monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

As a rough outline, these fats are better for you than saturated or certainly trans fats.

3

Probably a typo with a missing 0, so that 10 should be 100.

As Mijin writes, there are many varieties of fats. You could have zero saturated fats and trans fats and that wouldn’t necessarily make it fat-free.

4

Carbs and protein provide around 4 Calories per gram, so they account for 112 Calories. If we assume a typo, that’s 112 Calories from carbs and protein + 100 Calories from fat for a total or 212 Calories - very close to the posted 217 Calories. So, yeah, I’m going with typo.

5

Donuts, by the way, are very nutritious. The most important kind of nutrient is calories. Failing to acquire calories in the diet will make you feel bad and stop functioning faster than the loss of any other nutrient. After air and water (which nobody calls “nutrients”), calories are the most important thing we can get.

Not that that is a smart way to think.

Putting on fat is nature’s way of conserving and saving. Just imagine if we were evolutionarily adapted to having careers and cheap, delicious food. The problem would be that we tended to acquire wealth far beyond our ability to consume it, but also tended to eat just barely enough to get by before we went out and exercised.

6

I can’t tell whether this is sarcasm or gibberish, but please don’t pay any attention to it.

All food is calories. There are calories in everything we digest. Calories are synonymous with food.

Donuts, of course, are not nutritious in the way the word is usually used. Nutritious normally has a connotation of healthiness. Donuts are fats and sugars, which are luxury items in our diets. Have them in moderation if you like, but only as a tiny part overall.

7

Neither. It is “humor”. And, like the best humor, it is true.

That’s exactly Napier’s point. Donuts are nutritious, but not in the way the word is usually used. They are nutritious in the sense that they have lots of calories, and a person will die from a zero-calorie diet much faster than from a zero-protein diet, or a zero-fat diet, or a zero-Vitamin-C diet. In fact, Napier agreed that donuts would be a stupid diet, by writing:

8

Maybe healthfulness? While a slab of beef may be regarded as healthful in some aspects, the donor definitely isn’t healthy.

9

You can be Ed McMahon if you want. Me, I’m changing the channel.

10

People frequently did that to Ed McMahon, too.

11

Donuts… is there anything they can’t do?

12

Not much good for serving soup in, like they do with bread sometimes…