No, because that ignores spectrographic evidence, as well as the well established fact that the “green cheese” story originated as a rhetorical example of something too stupid for even the greatest fool to believe.
And the question remains one that is fundamentally quantitative; is number A greater than number B, or is it not? No amount of a-priori speculation is going to answer it.
Have you done that spectrography, or are you relying on established body of science?
I’ll remind you once again of the question.
You say that this “question remains one that is fundamentally quantitative; is number A greater than number B, or is it not?”
I suspect that what you would say is that it is a simple question of calories in and calories out. Is the number of calories coming in greater than the calories being used to raise the temperature of the beer (or iced water)?
The problem is that if you rejig the question that way, all you are asking is whether it is possible to drink something that has (or has less than) the same number of calories that it would take to raise the temperature of that drink to body temperature. And of course that is possible, as Cecil shows with his example of drinking the Bud with an appropriate amount of ice water.
But you are not answering what is actually being asked, which is whether because the drink is cold you will not put on weight, ie is there is a causal link between the temperature of the drink and the calories that will be converted by your body to fat?
Given that we know (per the SDMB staff report cited above) that the body produces heat as a byproduct of metabolism regardless of any cold drinks you may have had, you simply cannot answer the question properly without considering the question of whether the cold drink will cause your body to use more calories, or whether your body will use vasoconstriction, clothing adjustment etc to maintain core temperature while using byproduct heat over a period of time, until it has warmed the drink using nothing extra beyond what it would have used otherwise over the same period.
To give the question some perspective, consider this. According to this site a 175 pound man burns 14k/cal per 10 minutes just sleeping, and 57 k/cal per 10 minutes when engaged in light activity. At only 40% efficiency (per the SDMB staff report) that is some 50 k/cal per hour of heat production just sleeping, and 205 k/cal of heat production per hour when gardening. That is sufficient (according to Cecil’s figures) to warm a 355ml beer can from freezing to body temp in 15 minutes sleeping or about just 4 minutes gardening without using one additional calorie beyond that which you would have burnt, just doing those activities.
The evidence that your body would react to a cold drink by feeling a need to burn additional calories is thin on the ground indeed.
I may be wrong in my ultimate conclusions (I don’t think I am) but am quite certain that even if I am, the standard explanation offered by Cecil and Howstuff works is entirely inadequate.
Actually Princhester, I believe you are more correct than you know. IIRC, sweating actually increases your metabolism and burns extra calories – it’s hard work, keeping cool. If you drink ice water when you’re hot, it would actually decrease the amount of calories you burn. We need Qadgop to, err, weigh in on this.
Dear Princhester, there is no need to let tempers rise and start using foul language in this forum.
Apologies. No excuses.
Truth Seeker I must say that I would doubt that sweating would increase metabolism. Have you got a cite? I googled and couldn’t find anything.
Given that any increase in metabolism is going to increase heat production (60% etc) it would seem counterproductive for metabolism to increase as a result of sweating.
At the very least, you would have to assume that sweating increases cooling by a factor greater than any heat production thereby caused, otherwise sweating wouldn’t work.
I recall having read this. I tried turning up a cite but, unfortunately, doing a search on “sweating” and “burning calories” is, ahh, a bit over-inclusive. I was able to find a couple of sites making this claim but the tended to be sauna manufacturers. This site seems like it ought to have the answer but I can’t really tell. Also, some of the graphs don’t seem quite right to me. Perhaps I’m not always completely clear on what they’re measuring.
Anyway, it at least makes logical sense that you would burn more calories when sweating. As you point out, heat is usually a biproduct of metabolism rather than a specific output. In other words, for the most part, you’re not trying to produce body heat, it just happens. Logically, your metabolism would be lowest when you are at thermal equilibrium, i.e., you’re metabolism is throwing off just enough heat to maintain your body temperature without having to make any extra effort to do so. If the temperature went down one degree, your body would have to do something to compensate, either by lowering heat loss or increasing heat production. If the temperature goes up a degree, however, your body can only act to increase heat loss since we’ve hypothesized that your metabolism is, in effect, at rest. Since your body now has to “do” an extra task (sweat) your metabolism will slightly increase. Sweating, of course is an extremely efficient method of shedding excess heat because of the very high heat of vaporiziation of water.
This seems to be a good GQ question. Perhaps one of us should post it sometime when we can be sure of getting Qadgop’s attention.
BTW, the site I linked to seems to say that your body does do things to incrementally increase you metabolism when you get cold that are short of shivering.
I don’t expect there is much work involved in sweating though. Surely it’s just a matter of glands and pores opening.
Fantastic site you have cited. I think the key point as far as my argument is concerned is this:
If I understand this correctly, this means that it is not until the external temperature is below 20 C that any significant chemical (ie metabolic rate) mechanisms are used to maintain temperature. Bear in mind that is for a nude person, and presumably for a clothed person the effective air temperature (within your clothes) is going to be 20 C long after the external air temp has fallen below that mark.
So I remain convinced that in most situations, the body is only going to react to a cold drink by vaso constriction (at most) to preserve heat, and that it is going to use the by product of normal metabolism and no additional calories, to warm the drink.
To play devils advocate, I would like to point out that almost every single time I drink a large glass of cold water, I do in fact shiver. MUch like the URL=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_225.html]“piss shiver” cecil wrote on. How then do you account for these happenings?
Are you suggesting that you are average?
I am not suggesting that no one, under any circumstances, shivers or increases their metabolism upon having a cold drink. I am suggesting that most people, under most conditions, do not and therefore Cecil’s answer is unqualified to an extent that borders on completely wrong.
What i am aluding to is that based on the piss shiver column, it is possible and not uncommon for peope (men in this case) to shiver after expelling about a glass of urine. The point is, if losing body heat through the loss of fuild casues the body to atempt to heat up, would inducing an equal amount of cold liquid have the same effect? IT is basicly the same proccess in reverse.
Since we’re revisiting the infamous “piss shiver” series, I want to say that the “loss of body heat” explanation is pure bunk. Getting rid of a liter of body temperature fluid does not lower your body temperature. At worst, it simply decreases your thermal mass.
To put it another way, your urine is the same temperature as the rest of your body – it’s not somehow generating heat. Dumping it out doesn’t somehow cool you off.
Ok I have been spending way to much time thinking about this, and perhaps I need to get a girlfriend, but I digress.
The question that I have is this: If your body “feels” cold isn’t that the same as really being cold?
Basically I’m saying that if when a person urinates, and that causes (by whatever mechanism) that persons body react as if it were losing heat (shiver, etc) then for all intents and purposes, that person IS in fact losing body heat. Therefore, if “losing” body heat through urination causes this heat increasing reactions, then would it not be logical to say that introducing a similar quantities (or greater) would also induces these reaction, and increase their calorie burn, due to the increase muscle activity? Granted this would not work for everyone, in so much as not everyone experiences piss shiver, and it may be a minute increase, but I do not think it can be ruled out as a possibility
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What? Why? No, they are not losing body heat. Truth Seeker already explained why. No matter if the body reacts by shivering, the simple fact is that urinating body temp urine does not lower body heat.
Agreed that if something makes you shiver, then that is going to burn calories. Whether it is a significant factor seems to me highly debatable. At least in my experience, piss shiver or a brief shiver after drinking something that is too cold is very momentary.
Yes, but I think what he’s saying is the piss shiver explanation is bogus, it doesn’t work that way, so therefore your explanation about drinking and equal amount of cool fluid would also be bogus.
In rereading my post I see my point wasn’t as clear as it could be, What I ment to imply was that the entire process is most likely in the mind of the person. “I should feel cold, therefore I’ll react like I’m cold.” Bottom line is, if your body reacts like it’s 20 below zero, as far as you are concerned it is.
I’m saying that piss shiver happens, reguardless of how it happens it does. In the act of shivering, the body could also go through it’s alother “warm up” processes. If that is true, then for it would be possible for the same reaction to occur in reverse.
OK, I’ll think that way.
Let’s see, if I put a pan of beans on my manifold, and drive to (quick calculation) Albuquerque, then the beans will have been completely reduced to carbon. No effect on the engine. So, by that, beans have no calories–at least, as far as the internal body engine goes. OK, so that’s nonsense.
Wait, lets put that ice cold beer inside the engine, inside the gas tank. Now how much fuel is the car going to use? I may not get to Des Moines. 
That’s the problem with fucking qualitative arguments. (Arnold, I thought foul language was allowed in this forum–but not serious name-calling or insults) You never know when they might apply.
For instance, I can counter your vaso-constriction argument easily, qualitatively. Clearly, vaso-constriction is not good for a body 24/7. That’s not an option all the time. If you drank cold water all the time, eventually the body would adjust–metabolism would increase so that vaso-constriction wouldn’t be necessary.
What that says, qualitatively, is that the quantitative analysis is not good on a specific case, but is good in the long run. Hey, we’re talking calories here–a glut of 20,000 calories dumped down your gullet in a couple hours is not going to result in complete conversion of those calories–some are going to run on through. (Isn’t it true that floaters just have high fat content?) That doesn’t mean that the basic calorie calculation isn’t valid, in the long run, on average. Those calorie counts on nutrition labels are not precise, but you can use them for planning.
On the other hand, if you have experimental evidence to the contrary, we’d love to look it over.
I’m not sure that you add very much besides a lot of bombast, RM Mentock
Agreed. What you just said is certainly nonsense. What it has to do with the point I was illustrating, is, well, frankly zip.
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And what do you think “the long run” would be for your average human? Your fallacy here lies in leaping from “If you drank cold water all the time, eventually the body would adjust–metabolism would increase” to some statement about the Cecil analysis being appropriate “in the long run”.
I would turn that on its head and say that what your argument shows, is that only in a ridiculous non-real world example in which you hold down your body temperature using cold drinks 24/7 till your body can’t cope with mere vaso constriction and has to raise temperature by increasing metabolism does Cecil’s analysis work out in the long run.
In any more realistic example what actually happens in the long run is that you drink your cold beer and ice water, your body vaso constricts for a while, then you engage in some activity (which you would have anyway) which generates sufficient by-product heat to warm the beer, you eat a meal and you carry on and whether that beer was drunk cold or warm does not make jot of difference to how many calories your body burned over the relevant period.
If this isn’t already absolutely clear (and it certainly should be by now) I have no dispute with the point that it is entirely possible to think of extreme examples in which the coldness of the beer will cause you to burn more calories.
My point is that usually that will not happen.
Finally, don’t go pulling the holier than thou “if you have experimental evidence to the contrary, we’d love to look it over” crap on me. Neither you nor Cecil have produced a single piece of experimental evidence of anything at all and you are the one’s advancing the hypothesis, not me. And yet, I am the one who has provided the cites, including a cite of very extensive research into body temp, which supports my critique of Cecil’s position entirely.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Princhester *
I’m not sure that you add very much besides a lot of bombast, RM Mentock
That was my point. It was qualitative.
But it was qualitative.
It may have been Lord Kelvin.
And once again, you and your fellow travellers attempt to reduce the actual question asked down to something you know the answer to. I’m getting a feeling of deja vu here.
I can perhaps forgive myself for not knowing about Lord Kelvin’s work on the effect on calorie consumption of the introduction of calorific fluids into complex, self regulating heat producing organisms. Even you, I think, would accept that his work in that field is less well known.
You do have a cite for his work on that topic, don’t you RM Mentock?
Or maybe, just maybe, are you totally and utterly lacking in experimental support for your position?