Dietary Information

Emailed to me by a friend (Thanks, Charles)

As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. Translated in to meaningful terms, this means that if you eat a very cold dessert (generally consisting of water in large part), the natural processes which raise the consumed dessert to body temperature during the digestive cycle literally suck the calories out of the only available source, your body fat.

For example, a dessert served and eaten at near 0 degrees (32.2 degrees F) will in a short time be raised to the normal body temperature of 37 degrees C (98.6 degrees F). For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes approximately 37 calories as stated above. The average dessert portion is 6 ounces, or 168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamic law, 6,216 calories (1 cal./gm/degree x 37 deg. x 168 gms) are extracted from the body fat as the dessert’s temperature is normalized.

Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories.

Obviously, the more cold dessert you eat, the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight, if that is your goal.

This process works equally well when drinking very cold beer in frosted glasses. Each ounce of beer contains 16 latent calories, but extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 calories per 6 oz portion) in the temperature normalizing process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of beer is 1,020 calories. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate that 12,240 calories (12 oz x 1,020 cal/oz) are extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of beer.

Frozen desserts, e.g. ice cream, are even more beneficial, since it takes 83 cal/gm to melt them (i.e. raise them to 0 degrees C) and an addition 37 cal/gm to further raise them to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable, and it beats running, hands down.

Unfortunately, for those who eat pizza as an excuse to drink beer, pizza (loaded with latent calories and served above body temperature) induces the opposite effect. But, thankfully, as the astute reader should have already reasoned, the obvious solution is to drink a lot of beer with the pizza and follow up immediately with large bowls of ice cream.

We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, beer, and ice cream diet. Happy eating!

Reality Check: In actuality, the "food" calorie is different from the "heat" calorie by a factor of 1000. When you are reading those "nutritional information" labels on food packaging, just multiply "calories" by 1000 to translate those "food" calories into "scientific" calories. So when that can of soup says that there are only 35 calories from fat out of 250 calories total, that really means 35,000 "heat" calories from fat out of 250,000 "heat" calories total.

(I think I'll just be less scientific in my food consumption. I like the math better that way! Now, where did I put that pizza?)

Comments, suggestions, flames, etc.
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