is it possible to inhale calories, let’s say, from a cigarette? seems like it could be since it ends up in the bloodstream.
SIZE=1]NOTE: i cannot be held responsible for the absurdity and/or stupidity of this question due to sleep deprivation.[/SIZE]
oops! darn it! this is why i wish this board would allow people to edit their posts!
Cigerettes have calories?
I think the food item has to be injested into the belly to become caloric.
No.
Now, get some sleep.
Seriously, can the lung absorb fat, protein or carbohydrate? I don’t think so, and if it could, would getting it into the bloodstream be the end all? No. To think so would be a smack in the face to my digestive system!
The lung cannot digest food.
Well, now don’t think you can say “The calories in this brownie doesn’t count because I inhaled it.” 
sorry, but if you think about it carbohydrates are just another compound aren’t they? we inhale carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen every day, don’t we? but i guess it was a stupid question.
one last thing and i’ll shut up… whether calories can be inhaled from cigarettes or not, wouldn’t some of the particles in the smoke end up getting in the throat, and oozing down the esophagus? i know my sister, when she first statrted smoking, used to accidentally swallow the smoke. ick!
wouldn’t matter…you still have to digest any form of calorie which would be carbs, fat, protein, and what I call quasi-carbs (no impact on blood sugar carbs). that’s not going to happen in your lungs.
Yet when we smell something, like fresh baked pies for example, we are inhaling small particles of the food itself.
I’m not a molecular scientist so there’s a good chance I’m completely wrong, but wouldn’t these particles that make it to our olfactory system be small enough to be absorbed into our bloodstream and add to our total caloric intake? A minute increase, perhaps, but still an increase.
What about skin absorption, e.g. say you worked fast-food, and came home weighing 3 pounds more due to just the grease on your skin. What could have soaked in? (the 3 pounds is probably a gross overestimate. I just made that up. )
Usually, the lungs only absorb gases. However, tobacco, marijuana, opiates, cocaine, and a variety of toxic stuff can be absorbed there. I don’t think it’s a silly question.
Well, ask yourself what you are inhaling: soot, tar, nicotine, and other trace chemicals.
Ask yourself what actually provides caloric value to your cells: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
Are these compounds similar?
Not enough.
True, a lot of the tobacco leaf will be carbohydrates, but they are being burned. Hence, the caloric value of these compounds are removed before they can enter the bloodstream. (Aside: to experimentally determine the caloric value of foods, one procedure is to, in fact, burn them)
True also, some of the other chemicals will have C-H bonds, but they aren’t absorbed through the aveoli.
“Armchair analysis” points in the direction of no, even if the smoker’s bloodstream is able to absorb every combustion product.
So, basically, the argument is that lungs can’t absorb else than gasses, and if they did, there isn’t any food value in what it could absorb.
So what about chaoticdonkey’s question of skin absorbtion? IIRC, water and oxygen could be absorbed by the skin. Now there exists patches that deliver medication through the skin, nicotine, birth control medication, why not oil as well?
What’s the straight dope? Is there a Doctor in the house?
I ate brownies once, but I didn’t inhale.
Foods - fats, proteins, carbohydrates - are molecules too large to normally enter the body even in the digestive tract. They must be broken down into the simplest possible molecules - fatty acids, amino acids, and simple sugars - by enzymes in the intestines. This is literally the process of digestion.
There is next to no chance whatsoever that food molecules will be absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs, skin, or throat. Your whole body could be immersed in food-grade oil and nothing would happen.
Swallowing molecules in the air as odors is theoretically possible. Would any of the odors actually be food molecules? No they would not. Odors are different things entirely.
Sorry, the answer to the question is an unqualified no.
What if there was a high enough concentration of simple sugars or something in the air?
One would drown in them, as they would flood the alveoli, and prevent the absorption of oxygen.
I disagree with this statement. When you smell an odor from a food, you are smelling particles that make up a portion of the food itself.
While these odorous particles do not make up a complete representation of the entire food itself, just the most volatile molecules, they still are part of the molecular compound that you ingest and absorb calories from. So while they may make up a very small fraction of a calorie, I don’t think you can dismiss them as “different things entirely.”
Sorry, but I don’t think that volatile aromatics are fats, proteins, or carbohydrates. There are hundreds or thousands of compounds in coffee for example, but no caloric value.
Just because they are part of the molecular compound does not necessarily imply that they are food components.
Here’s a good page explaining the what the volatile chemicals are made of.
Actually, the answer may be yes. From here:
(emphasis mine)
So things that you inhale can sometimes end up in the stomach. If you did manage to inhale something that could be digested and converted into calories then what the OP suggests could happen. But I doubt that this would contribute any meaningful amount of calories or nutrition. And I don’t think it would happen with tobacco smoke.