A coworker an I were joking around the other day about how some health food crazes are found to be bad for you, and how sometimes foods thought to be unhealthy are now good for you. It came about, that I had a theory that ice cream should be good for you.
Here goes. 1 calorie is the amount of energy needed to heat a defined amount of water 1 degree. When you ingest something cold, your body passively heats the food inside of you up to body temparture. Evident in the fact that we don’t crap ice cubes. We all know that it takes energy for your body to heat itself. My theory is that your body will use more energy to heat the cold food up. The colder the food, the more energy required. The more energy you burn, the more calories you burn.
Of course ice cream isn’t healthy for you. I’m not quite that dumb. What I want to know, is the rest of my thoery sound? Does eating cold food burn more calories, and is it healthier for you than eating hot food?
Yes, eating cold food burns more calories - but the difference is so tiny as to not matter.
See, food calories are not the same unit of measure that’s used in physics. The “calories” referred to with food are actually kilocalories - so if your sundae containes 800 food calories, that’s 800,000 calories as physics counts it. That ice cream’s going to have to be awfully cold to make up that difference.
Just this morning, the doctor told us that my 1-year old daughter needs to be fed foods like(1) french fries; (2) cookies; (3) cheese crackers; and (4) ice cream.
Now that’s a prescription that most of us could accept!
That amount would be a gram. But don’t forget that calories in food are actually kilocalories. That is, one food calorie is enough energy to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree. Kind of throws off the whole thing.
I always thought that the food heating up was just a side effect of the heat your body released. As in, you’re going to be giving off the heat already, the fact that it is warming up ice cream isn’t going to matter. Obviously if you get really cold all over, you’re going to start shivering and that’s going to burn calories with the purpose of generating more heat. But I thought that that was a threshhold thing, and below a certain point, you’re going to be losing the same amount of heat no matter what you do.
Although if your body is supposed to stay at 98.6 Fahrenheit, I would think that even the slightest temperature variations would have real (if not easily observable) effects.
So what’s the deal? Does the warming of cold things actually affect your metabolism, or is it just a side effect?
It’s true, each evening i take a swig of liquid nitrogen and i have lost 15 pounds in the past month. :rolleyes:
Lucwarm, most doctors pass through med school having taken a maximum of 1 course on nutrition. I would avoid a doctor that recommends treats and fast food as a staple in a child’s diet.
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“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” – Albert Einstein
AndrewL: “That ice cream’s going to have to be awfully cold to make up that difference.”
Indeed. Using numbers I found online*, to break even you’d need to cool your ice cream down to a nice, pleasant -2124°C, well below the realm of physical possibility.
Big Sam: “Does eating cold food burn more calories, and is it healthier for you than eating hot food?”
Your theory does hold, but if you eat a half-cup of frozen ice cream at 0°C vs. room-temperature liquid ice cream, you’d only burn about 12 more Calories. I can think of a lot more fun ways to burn 12 Calories than eating warm ice cream.
[sup]* I found one website which gives the Ice Cream Diet idea as a physics problem, and it says you can treat the ice cream as water, so I’ll do that. 4 fl oz of chocolate ice cream holds 142 Calories. Water has a specific heat of 1 Cal / kg C°, and ice’s is 0.51 Cal / kg C°. Water has a latent heat of fusion of 80 Cal / kg. 4 oz is 0.1183 kg. Body temperature is 37°.[/sup]
Anyway, my personal take on this is that the natural stuff they steer you away from (FAT!! FAT IS EVIL!!) will be healthier than the low fat crap with the ingredients list you can’t pronounce.
Of course, that’s true of most things.
It’s a shame for ME because I can barely find food anymore that’s made with real ingredients. It’s all chemical crap now… we’re killing our bodies with chemicals to avoid that EEEEVIL natural fat. Knee-jerk reactionism. Makes the world go round.
Hey, thanks for all your input. Of course eating nothing but ice cream is in no way healthy, but maybe I’ll start eating ice instead of dringing water.
Of course, there’s at least one company that prides itself on not using any of those unpronouncable chemicals. That company is Breyer’s, whose main product is ice cream.
That would actually work better than the ice cream. One 33-gram ice cube will burn you 2.6 Calories, compared with the same amount of ice water. Of course, you have to be patient enough to sit there with the ice cube in your mouth while it melts, and you have to make sure the ice melts from your body heat. I personally think that walking for a minute or two is just as easy, though.
luc, I’m with Lao on this one. I avoid french fries like the plague because I do NOT want my kid addicted to those. That could become a huge problem later.
Is your baby too skinny? So was ours. He got down to the 5th percentile in weight, while he was born over 9 lbs!!! So we had to fatten him up. We did so with frequent meals. Ice cream is probably good–one nurse suggested me make some milkshakes with half-and-half. We never tried that, though. Cheese is great (hard cheese fights tooth plaque, too!). We added grated parmesan to his pasta, stuff like that. As for cookies, try to make healthy cookies (pumpkin, banana, apple raisin). Replace a few tablespoons of the regular flour with soy flour (it’s higher in fat and protein, but you can’t use too much due to its funky taste).
Go get the book “Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense” by Elaine Salter (hope I got her name right). Or any other book by her. She’s the kid nutrition guru.
Quite alright, highjack away, I already learned what I wanted to know. As for feeding your 1 year old fries, don’t be an idiot. It’s that sort of mentality that gives America 100 lb. 5 year olds.
