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Baking literally burns off sugar calories??

bikecheryl
bikecheryl Posts: 1,432 Member
I found it interesting that this hasn't really been studied before.

They make a distinction between different types of sugar, but still .........

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/second-opinion-baking-calories-1.4690996
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Replies

  • bikecheryl
    bikecheryl Posts: 1,432 Member
    Bottom line, no.

    It doesn't get hot enough to alter the molecular makeup.

    Ok, I don't profess to understanding all of the science behind it.

    So what did they get wrong ?
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
    In my experience there seems to be a small but noticeable difference in my blood sugar from what's expected based on browning - supposedly this applies to the crust of breads too, the crust having fewer carbs by weight than would be expected. Interesting that they found different results from different types of sugars - were the researchers sponsored by a particular sugar interest or anyone else who might have told them to focus on that?

    For normal people I doubt that it would make much difference. For me as a diabetic, it's just a small thing to be aware of.

  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,149 Member
    The only time I've browned sugar is making caramel sauce. Are they actually baking these cakes, or just browning the sugar, then making cake batter and not baking the cake?
  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
    DX2JX2 wrote: »
    I don't necessarily think they're wrong but I do think that the calorie loss isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Since it's fairly impossible to get a 100% accurate picture of the calories that we eat every day, a 5-8% loss in sugar calories in baked goods won't really make a difference.

    What they are saying though is that in a cake with invert sugar, they found the digestible or available calorie content decreased by 36 per cent, while in cake with sucrose, it declined by about 12 per cent.

    For people who like cake an additional 24% decrease would seem like a good thing to me.

    I haven't read the research so I don't know if it's true or even plausible as I don't like cake so I don't really care. However, if they could do the same thing to potato chips I'd be all ears......
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Some thoughts.
    - If there were a measurable difference the insulin dependent diabetics would have figured it out by now.
    - I’m not so sure that the less digestible sugars won’t count towards tooth decay.
    - Butterscotch will start pouring off the shelf. The new superfood.
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    DX2JX2 wrote: »
    I don't necessarily think they're wrong but I do think that the calorie loss isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Since it's fairly impossible to get a 100% accurate picture of the calories that we eat every day, a 5-8% loss in sugar calories in baked goods won't really make a difference.

    What they are saying though is that in a cake with invert sugar, they found the digestible or available calorie content decreased by 36 per cent, while in cake with sucrose, it declined by about 12 per cent.

    For people who like cake an additional 24% decrease would seem like a good thing to me.

    I haven't read the research so I don't know if it's true or even plausible as I don't like cake so I don't really care. However, if they could do the same thing to potato chips I'd be all ears......

    I don't know any cake where the total sugar even makes up 36% of the calories. There's a whole lot of fat and starch in there.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    edited June 2018
    When sugar is cooked hot enough to be black and crusty, basically inedible, it's been carbonized. The calories in sugar is the energy contained in the bonds holding carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen together. Carbon isn't sugar. The sugar added to yeast bread is mostly consumed by the yeast in the hours of rising which are allowed before baking.

    In the case of this study, I can certainly imagine that a lot of people will have 200% the serving size because of the 20% calorie from sugar saving by baking with invert sugar, even when the nutrition label doesn't mention invert sugar at all.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    So 12% reduction means 88 calories instead of 100. over the course of 24 hours, unless you're weighing to the gram, that ends up as noise against logging accurately.

    the invert sugar is more interesting, because 36% means 65 calories vs 100 or 88 but I noticed that the baked goods also looked different, which suggests possible flavor or texture differences. This matters, especially for baking.
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
    DX2JX2 wrote: »
    I don't necessarily think they're wrong but I do think that the calorie loss isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Since it's fairly impossible to get a 100% accurate picture of the calories that we eat every day, a 5-8% loss in sugar calories in baked goods won't really make a difference.

    What they are saying though is that in a cake with invert sugar, they found the digestible or available calorie content decreased by 36 per cent, while in cake with sucrose, it declined by about 12 per cent.

    For people who like cake an additional 24% decrease would seem like a good thing to me.

    I haven't read the research so I don't know if it's true or even plausible as I don't like cake so I don't really care. However, if they could do the same thing to potato chips I'd be all ears......

    I don't know any cake where the total sugar even makes up 36% of the calories. There's a whole lot of fat and starch in there.

    It was only 36% of the calories from Sugar I believe NOT the total calories. I'm just quoting what they said.......
  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
    So 12% reduction means 88 calories instead of 100. over the course of 24 hours, unless you're weighing to the gram, that ends up as noise against logging accurately.

    the invert sugar is more interesting, because 36% means 65 calories vs 100 or 88 but I noticed that the baked goods also looked different, which suggests possible flavor or texture differences. This matters, especially for baking.

    I googled inverted sugar/syrup as I didn't know what it was but according to the 100% accurate Wikipedia its a mixture of water and sucrose which is often used by bakers to keep stuff moist. I seems it's already used in baked good so there's no "extra" reduction if commercial bakers use it already.
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
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  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    edited June 2018
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
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    @stanmann571

    test
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,149 Member
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    Oh, so it's not something on my end. Saw a post of hers with the default avatar and was sad.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
    Sorry, but the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL and try again.

    Weird. Hope she's ok.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
    Sorry, but the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL and try again.

    I haven't seen her post in ages, maybe she's gone :disappointed:

    As for the article, it's saying the cake you've been eating all along might have a bit less calories than you thought. Cool, but I'm not going to start eating tons of cake and muffins all day. I guess it makes it easier to fit in to my calories, but whether that chocolate muffin is 400 cals or 300 cals, it's still an indulgence!

    I know a lot of people think the whole "cooking changes cals" and "cooking and cooling changes cals" etc is something to watch, but I've been tracking my cals for years and I have to think all of this stuff just causes subtle variations that fall within the noise of margin for error.
  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Anyone else get somewhat annoyed when people get excited by the concept that they can destroy food?

    Assuming that this is correct (you certainly can heat sugar enough to carbonize it and basically destroy its caloric value) then all you are doing is wasting it. If you heat sugar enough to the point where it is non-caloric you haven't just magically turned the sweet stuff into zero calorie sweet-stuff, you've turned it into ash. At that point why even add it? Understand that if you have heated sugar enough to make it non-caloric that it will then no longer be sugar, no longer be sweet, and serve no purpose in being in your food. You have just taken a food stuff that someone bothered to cultivate, harvest, turn into a product and provide you to you and you burn it so you don't have to get calories from it. Awesome.

    Did you even read the link?

    They apparently found that a cake baked with sugar syrup had a few less calories than a cake baked with table sugar. No one was carbonizing anything LOL
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited June 2018
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Anyone else get somewhat annoyed when people get excited by the concept that they can destroy food?

    Assuming that this is correct (you certainly can heat sugar enough to carbonize it and basically destroy its caloric value) then all you are doing is wasting it. If you heat sugar enough to the point where it is non-caloric you haven't just magically turned the sweet stuff into zero calorie sweet-stuff, you've turned it into ash. At that point why even add it? Understand that if you have heated sugar enough to make it non-caloric that it will then no longer be sugar, no longer be sweet, and serve no purpose in being in your food. You have just taken a food stuff that someone bothered to cultivate, harvest, turn into a product and provide you to you and you burn it so you don't have to get calories from it. Awesome.

    Did you even read the link?

    They apparently found that a cake baked with sugar syrup had a few less calories than a cake baked with table sugar. No one was carbonizing anything LOL

    I read the OP's title and assumed that was what we were talking about.

    Also I used logic to assume that what we were talking about was a claim that if you take 100 calories of X and bake it you end up with 80 calories of X. Regardless of how exactly you end up with 80 calories of X the net result of that is that you just lost 20 calories of usable energy. Not sure why that is a positive thing. Pretty sure if you heat sugar enough to remove its caloric value you are either going to break it down (carbonize it) or you are perhaps going to cause it to react with other molecules and maybe form undigestable adducts. Either way you end up with something that isn't sweet and isn't digested so....yeah.
  • DX2JX2
    DX2JX2 Posts: 1,921 Member
    DX2JX2 wrote: »
    I don't necessarily think they're wrong but I do think that the calorie loss isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Since it's fairly impossible to get a 100% accurate picture of the calories that we eat every day, a 5-8% loss in sugar calories in baked goods won't really make a difference.

    What they are saying though is that in a cake with invert sugar, they found the digestible or available calorie content decreased by 36 per cent, while in cake with sucrose, it declined by about 12 per cent.

    For people who like cake an additional 24% decrease would seem like a good thing to me.

    I haven't read the research so I don't know if it's true or even plausible as I don't like cake so I don't really care. However, if they could do the same thing to potato chips I'd be all ears......

    How much cake are you eating? I just looked up a recipe for simple white cake. The sugar contributed slightly less than 800 calories to that recipe (1 cup). Even assuming a 36% decrease in calories for this example, that would equate to about 290 calories.

    Over 12 servings, that reduction is equal to about 25 calories per slice. Not necessarily a calorie windfall, all things considered. You'll probably get more variance in calories from the size of the eggs or precision of measurement on the other ingredients.
  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Anyone else get somewhat annoyed when people get excited by the concept that they can destroy food?

    Assuming that this is correct (you certainly can heat sugar enough to carbonize it and basically destroy its caloric value) then all you are doing is wasting it. If you heat sugar enough to the point where it is non-caloric you haven't just magically turned the sweet stuff into zero calorie sweet-stuff, you've turned it into ash. At that point why even add it? Understand that if you have heated sugar enough to make it non-caloric that it will then no longer be sugar, no longer be sweet, and serve no purpose in being in your food. You have just taken a food stuff that someone bothered to cultivate, harvest, turn into a product and provide you to you and you burn it so you don't have to get calories from it. Awesome.

    Did you even read the link?

    They apparently found that a cake baked with sugar syrup had a few less calories than a cake baked with table sugar. No one was carbonizing anything LOL

    I read the OP's title and assumed that was what we were talking about.

    Also I used logic to assume that what we were talking about was a claim that if you take 100 calories of X and bake it you end up with 80 calories of X. Regardless of how exactly you end up with 80 calories of X the net result of that is that you just lost 20 calories of usable energy. Not sure why that is a positive thing. Pretty sure if you heat sugar you are either going to break it down (carbonize it) or you are perhaps going to cause it to react with other molecules and maybe form undigestable adducts. Either way you end up with something that isn't sweet and isn't digested so....yeah.

    No me neither really just the modern world I guess.

    My Grandfather got paid for his sweat. I pay a gym to sweat.

    He paid a significant part of his salary to feed his family. I pay for diet Coke because it has no calories.

    Also to be fair journalists spin science all the time. The researches were probably just researching.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
    Science journalism is dead. Journalism is undead...or vampires...or whatever is lower than death.
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
    Sorry, but the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL and try again.

    Weird. Hope she's ok.

    Very weird. I tried to send her a PM but the app removed her name and asked me for one.
    I hope she's okay as well.
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
    Sorry, but the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL and try again.

    Weird. Hope she's ok.

    Very weird. I tried to send her a PM but the app removed her name and asked me for one.
    I hope she's okay as well.

    :disappointed:
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,343 Member
    bpetrosky wrote: »
    @lemurcat12
    I tried to tag lemurcat12 but she appears to have deactivated?? I thought she'd be interested in this discussion.
    Anyway, tagging to follow.

    right. I tried that.
    Page not found
    Sorry, but the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL and try again.

    Weird. Hope she's ok.

    She's alive and well. Just not here.

    ^ Yep.