Comment on How is it possible that praline pecans have less calories than regular pecans?
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
This article indicates that the USA FDA allows for up to a 20% margin of error for values required to be on the Nutrition Facts label. The article also describes multiple methods of measuring the calorific value of food, either by burning it in the not-so-TSA-friendly-named bomb calorimeter or through methods that have standardized the calorific value of each constituent nutrient.
It’s also the case that not every foodstuff is perfectly identical to all other products. A banana is hardly going to be constituted exactly like another banana, and even the most basic measurement of mass will not match up to other bananas.
As an aside, I do fondly remember making a bomb calorimeter in chemistry class using a polystyrene cup as the insulation. It worked remarkably well, IIRC, being within 10% of what we were given as the expected value. Obviously, real measurements would be far more controlled than what some college freshmen can manage, but the concept is sound, if only measuring what the food provides, not necessarily what the human digestive tract can extract.
As an aside to an aside, celery appears to not be a negative-calorie food, after considering human digestion.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
That’s what I assumed was the thing. I understand that sugar has less calories per gram, but butter is also a big part of the mix. So I assumed it would be much closer to the calories of actual pecans. But even a 10% margin of error would probably allow for that I would assume.