On a recent radio quiz show, the question was asked about which had more calories, A stick of gum or a piece of Cream Pie. The answer was the gum with around 250 calories. I’m unable to find out how why this is, the packs of gum state there are only 5-10 calories im most of the gum I chew, but my pack of sugerless Trident says it’s not a low calorie food.
Is 5-10 calories the amount you injest by chewing it, and 200+ what you would get if you swallowed the whole thing?
I think the difference is drawn between eating and just chewing it. I also doubt that - if you were to swallow it - the 250 cals could be broken down by the digestive system.
Gum is mostly latex rubber (???), and while it might have the potential of delivering 250 calories, I don’t think it would happen. You pretty much get 5-15 cals out of the sugar in it.
There is no difference in caloric content between chewing and swallowing. Calories come from digestion, which is the literal breaking down of the sugars into their simplest components.
Even if you talk about old-fashioned sugared gum, instead of the modern gum which uses sugar alcohols instead, there are 4 calories per gram of sugar. A 250 calorie food would weight 62.5 grams, or more than two ounces.
Who in the world has ever seen a two-ounce stick of gum?
If you chewed a stick of gum vigorously for several hours, you might burn off 250 calories from the exercise involved but that’s just a silly interpretation.
Moral: never trust a radio quiz show.
huh?
I’ve been mystified by the claim “not a low-calorie food” that I’ve seen on packages of sugarless gum. Is this because gum is not considered food (as opposed to not being low-calorie)?
Well, it would depend on the size of the piece of cream pie, wouldn’t it? If you imagine a tiny piece of pie, the same weight as an ordinary stick of gum, how many calories would that hold?
I don’t find it entirely unlikely that weight for weight gum has more calories than cream pie. Gum contains a lot of sugar and corn syrup, you know.
Wrigley’s Doublemint:
Serving Size: 1 Stick
Calories: 10
Fat: 0g
Sodium: 0mg
Total Carb.: 2g
Sugars: 2g
Protein: 0g
That column dates from 1976. Just try to find gum with sugar and corn syrup in it these days. There may be some old-fashioned specialty items out there, but probably nothing on the ordinary supermarket shelf.
As for “not a low-calorie food,” check the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21 for the official definition.