Are the calories of a banana used differently to the calories of cake?

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  • LeenaGee
    LeenaGee Posts: 749 Member
    edited January 2015
    countjassula wrote: »
    I'm pissed this thread isn't about banana cake. :(

    For me, I keep reading it and thinking - I'd really like some banana cake. All the arguments are lost on me at the moment.

    My input is nutrition, nutrition, nutrition. Food matters, food is your medicine and I'd really like some banana cake and I make a really nice one and that is what I am going to do now.

    My recipe is from Pete Evan's Paleo cookbook "Family Food" which is the No. 1 best selling book in Australia this week, including the fiction and non fiction section. Proof that change is on the horizon and people are becoming aware that they need to maximise the nutrients in their food and that the type of food they eat matters.
  • kyta32
    kyta32 Posts: 670 Member
    The difference can come in thermic effect, or the bioavailabilty of the calories.

    For example, fiber has 4.1 calories per gram, and some calories from fiber are included in the calorie count for any food with fiber. The percentage isn't standard, by my salad on MFP included 3/4 of the calories for fiber, when the fiber was unsoluble, and thus not available. Fiber can also interfere with the digestion of other nutrients, particularly fat. If you eat a meal with a lot of fiber, the usable calories will be less than the total calories. In that way, eating whole foods would lead to more weight loss than eating processed foods when the same amount of calories are brought into the body.

    Some calorie sources are processed more efficiently in the body. Protein is the least efficient, taking as much as 35% of calories ingested through protein to digest it. Fat is the most efficient, where as many as few as 5% of the calories ingested are needed to digest it. Also, calories from processed foods are more efficiently processed by the body. In this study:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897733/
    The energy expenditure to metabolize a processed cheese sandwich was 10.2% of sandwich calories. The energy to metabolize a whole-foods sandwich was 19.9% of sandwich calories. The sandwiches had the same macro ratios.

    So yes, both by the contribution of fiber and through being a whole food, the net caloric effect of 100 calories of banana and 100 calories of cake would be different. The amount for 100 calories worth of each would be negligible (maybe 10 calories), but eating a diet that is mostly from whole foods, and reducing processed foods, would most likely result in faster weight loss than a diet mostly composed of highly processed foods.
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    kyta32 wrote: »
    The difference can come in thermic effect, or the bioavailabilty of the calories.

    For example, fiber has 4.1 calories per gram, and some calories from fiber are included in the calorie count for any food with fiber. The percentage isn't standard, by my salad on MFP included 3/4 of the calories for fiber, when the fiber was unsoluble, and thus not available. Fiber can also interfere with the digestion of other nutrients, particularly fat. If you eat a meal with a lot of fiber, the usable calories will be less than the total calories. In that way, eating whole foods would lead to more weight loss than eating processed foods when the same amount of calories are brought into the body.

    Some calorie sources are processed more efficiently in the body. Protein is the least efficient, taking as much as 35% of calories ingested through protein to digest it. Fat is the most efficient, where as many as few as 5% of the calories ingested are needed to digest it. Also, calories from processed foods are more efficiently processed by the body. In this study:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897733/
    The energy expenditure to metabolize a processed cheese sandwich was 10.2% of sandwich calories. The energy to metabolize a whole-foods sandwich was 19.9% of sandwich calories. The sandwiches had the same macro ratios.

    So yes, both by the contribution of fiber and through being a whole food, the net caloric effect of 100 calories of banana and 100 calories of cake would be different. The amount for 100 calories worth of each would be negligible (maybe 10 calories), but eating a diet that is mostly from whole foods, and reducing processed foods, would most likely result in faster weight loss than a diet mostly composed of highly processed foods.

    bolded part is dead wrong …

    Also, I love how you type three paragraphs and then say, but yea TEF is pretty much minimal….thanks, we already knew that.

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  • SnuggleSmacks
    SnuggleSmacks Posts: 3,731 Member
    Now I want a donut.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,207 Member
    SnuggleSmacks wrote: »
    Now I want a donut.
    want a peanut, said in my finest André the giant voice.

  • wrecktechno
    wrecktechno Posts: 145 Member
    Actually, all calories are NOT created equal. A very quick google search:
    http://time.com/2988142/you-asked-are-all-calories-created-equal/
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-hyman/calories_b_5473743.html
  • DevonnDrossel
    DevonnDrossel Posts: 1
    EvgeniZyntx wrote: »
    lukeka2b wrote: »
    All very true, but I can eat a piece of fruit and be content. When I eat the cake, I want more. Maybe it's just me.

    Like I said, satiety is a (personal) factor. Personally - activity levels and what I've been eating the prior days is more of an issue than any one item. If I've been eating poorly, no single fruit is going to calm my hunger.

    Again, the overall factors leading to total diet diversity are more important than any single item.


  • tycho_mx
    tycho_mx Posts: 426 Member
    just one note on glycemic index - it's most of the times a gross simplification. Why? because even if the GI of white rice is very high, very few people eat it on its own. Add a protein, or a legume, or fiber and the GI of the meal goes down.

    So your white bread has high GI. Add some peanut butter. Bonus - it even tastes better! It still does nothing with the calorie intake, which pretty much is accepted to be the single largest component of the energy balance.
  • EvgeniZyntx
    EvgeniZyntx Posts: 24,208 Member
    tycho_mx wrote: »
    just one note on glycemic index - it's most of the times a gross simplification. Why? because even if the GI of white rice is very high, very few people eat it on its own. Add a protein, or a legume, or fiber and the GI of the meal goes down.

    So your white bread has high GI. Add some peanut butter. Bonus - it even tastes better! It still does nothing with the calorie intake, which pretty much is accepted to be the single largest component of the energy balance.

    Completely agree. And while GI might be of some concern for someone with a limited palate and/or having to adjust insulin shots for the majority, without medical conditions, and eating normal mixed meals the impact of GI over, say a day of eating and digesting, is non-existent versus calorie content.

    Whether it takes 40 minutes or 2 hours to digest the food. In 24 hours you've digested it all.

    There are situations where GI considerations make sense, but for the average dieter, getting calories dialed takes precedence.
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