Food temperature - may be a silly question

KeithChanning
KeithChanning Posts: 202 Member
in Food and Nutrition
This is probably a stupid question, but it's something that kind of flashed across my mind last night.

One calorie is defined as the amount of heat energy required to heat one millilitre of air-free water by one degree Celsius at standard atmospheric pressure. We are interested in kilocalories (kcal), so it's a thousand of those.

Without getting hung up on numbers but just looking at the theory, let's say that we want to cook 1Kg of chicken to the recommended internal temperature of 165°F (74°C) from room temperature of 68°F (20°C). If chicken had the same physical properties as water (clearly its doesn't, but bear with me), the energy we would need to apply to effect a temperature increase of 54°C would be 54 kcals.

Does that mean that the cooked chicken would contain 5.4kcals per 100gm more than raw? Would the calorie value be reduced if we ate it cold?

Replies

  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
    Not along the same line of reasoning but a piece of cooked chicken will have more calories than a raw piece of chicken because it will have lost some water weight during the cooking process. That's why it's important to to be sure that you're using the right calorie counts for meats. If the calories are given for raw weight and you use that for cooked you're eating a lot more than you are accounting for.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    Not along the same line of reasoning but a piece of cooked chicken will have more calories than a raw piece of chicken because it will have lost some water weight during the cooking process. That's why it's important to to be sure that you're using the right calorie counts for meats. If the calories are given for raw weight and you use that for cooked you're eating a lot more than you are accounting for.

    I think what you're trying to say (but not quite achieving) is that 1 pound of raw chicken has fewer calories than one pound of cooked chicken.

    If you take one pound of raw chicken and cook it, that piece of chicken will have the same calories cooked as raw. It will weigh less, though.

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