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Settle this argument with friends
Momepro
Posts: 1,509 Member
I have friends that are honestly convinced that one slice of cake that weighs about a quarter of a pound, including frosting and beung very rich, can make you gain at least a pound of weight.
I say physics makes that impossible. Technically you can gain 1/4 pound from that, most of which will quickly be digested and go away. They think I'm crazy and deluding myself. I'm saying it's not possible gor something to cause you to gain more weight than the item weighs.
I say physics makes that impossible. Technically you can gain 1/4 pound from that, most of which will quickly be digested and go away. They think I'm crazy and deluding myself. I'm saying it's not possible gor something to cause you to gain more weight than the item weighs.
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Replies
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It's a little more complex, particularly simple and complex carbohydrates, if one wants to be inanely technical.
Besides blood glucose, the sugars from carbohydrates in your body are generally stored as glycogen. Glycogen carries about 4 parts water to glucose by mass.
So eating the cake by itself can't increase mass by more than 1/4, but with water, more could be stored than the weight of the food, assuming it was eaten by someone with empty glycogen storage for it.
Practically speaking, for a person at maintenance or gaining, or trying to figure out long term effects, no, you won't gain weight greater than the mass of food you're eating, or even equal as water from it is lost.17 -
It is impossible for one piece of cake to make you gain a pound of fat.
It is theoretically possible for one piece of cake to temporarily make you gain that much of water weight from the carbs and potential sodium if you have it in conjunction with water, because it may lead to increased water extention. But even that is probably unlikely.
However if you were to step on a scale, weigh yourself, eat a piece of cake without drinking snything, then weigh yourself again, it is impossible to gain a pound.
My guess is that if they think they always gain at least a pound with a slice of cake it's probably because they are usually eating it in conjunction with other stuff.4 -
I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.7
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magnusthenerd wrote: »It's a little more complex, particularly simple and complex carbohydrates, if one wants to be inanely technical.
Besides blood glucose, the sugars from carbohydrates in your body are generally stored as glycogen. Glycogen carries about 4 parts water to glucose by mass.
So eating the cake by itself can't increase mass by more than 1/4, but with water, more could be stored than the weight of the food, assuming it was eaten by someone with empty glycogen storage for it.
Practically speaking, for a person at maintenance or gaining, or trying to figure out long term effects, no, you won't gain weight greater than the mass of food you're eating, or even equal as water from it is lost.
We were speaking of purely just the single item of food, not including anything like water, that you may drink a few minutes later. If you drank water, then you would add thst to the weight of what you are eating. Literally, can you physically gain more weight from any combo of food than it actually weighed before chewing ?0 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
Right?
That's my argument, lol! The response was "It just doesn't work that way. You (meaning me) are just oversimplifying a very difficult concept. You can have more calories than an item weighs. Duh. "
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SusieBanyon wrote: »113.3981 grams (1/4lb) is approximately going to be right around 300ish calories depending on toppings and what not. To gain one pound you must eat 3,500 calories or so over your total burn. So, no.
However, you can gain more weight than an item weighs depending on what the item is - there are some very hearty calorie foods out there that are light weight - gainers and such.
Otherwise, using that logic, everyone would gain/lose weight in accordance with the food's weight, so we'd all be eating one strawberry a day, right?
But say a food is as calorie dense as possible. Just absolutely maxes out the possible amount of calories. Ignoring any other conditions, such as good or liquid digested besides the "cake", or any caloric burning off you may do. Just retaining every bite of that cake and nothing else, would it suddenly weigh more inside your body than it did on the plate?2 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
oh magnus.......The OTHER 3/4 pound of cake? Maybe Im confused. The subject said a 1/4 pound of cake. Isnt tne other 3/4 pound sitting on the cake table for others to enjoy? Perhaps, I am confuused. Im sure I am. Correct me please... 🌹1 -
If you have a 0.25 lb slice of cake that contains 3500 calories, your weight will initially still only go up by 0.25lbs after you've eaten it.SusieBanyon wrote: »113.3981 grams (1/4lb) is approximately going to be right around 300ish calories depending on toppings and what not. To gain one pound you must eat 3,500 calories or so over your total burn. So, no.
However, you can gain more weight than an item weighs depending on what the item is - there are some very hearty calorie foods out there that are light weight - gainers and such.
Otherwise, using that logic, everyone would gain/lose weight in accordance with the food's weight, so we'd all be eating one strawberry a day, right?
But say a food is as calorie dense as possible. Just absolutely maxes out the possible amount of calories. Ignoring any other conditions, such as good or liquid digested besides the "cake", or any caloric burning off you may do. Just retaining every bite of that cake and nothing else, would it suddenly weigh more inside your body than it did on the plate?
Digestion takes time, and that cake has to pass through your intestines before your body can store any of the energy as fat.
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As a farmer I am going to use your friends logic on my sheep - I can feed them 1kg of rations and get 4kg of meat - hurray. For my next trick I am going to create a perpetual motion engine.14
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Unless of course, if eating one piece of cake prompts you to eat the rest of the cake......8
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SusieBanyon wrote: »113.3981 grams (1/4lb) is approximately going to be right around 300ish calories depending on toppings and what not. To gain one pound you must eat 3,500 calories or so over your total burn. So, no.
However, you can gain more weight than an item weighs depending on what the item is - there are some very hearty calorie foods out there that are light weight - gainers and such.
Otherwise, using that logic, everyone would gain/lose weight in accordance with the food's weight, so we'd all be eating one strawberry a day, right?
But say a food is as calorie dense as possible. Just absolutely maxes out the possible amount of calories. Ignoring any other conditions, such as good or liquid digested besides the "cake", or any caloric burning off you may do. Just retaining every bite of that cake and nothing else, would it suddenly weigh more inside your body than it did on the plate?
So this made me wonder and I did some maths, and now I'm confused
We're agreed that it takes roughly 3,500 calories to gain a pound, right? So what is the minimum weight of a food that could contain 3,500 calories?
The most calorie-dense food is pure fat, at 9 kcal per g. A 3,500 calorie block of fat would therefore weigh about 389 g.
Converted to Imperial, that's... 0.86 lb.
So in theory, it turns out that you could put on a pound of fat by eating less than a pound of fat. Which makes my head hurt.
Presumably the resolution is along the lines of the 'fat' we gain not actually being pure fat, but leavened with a reasonable amount of water too? So the 3,500 calories == a pound of fat metric actually means 3,500 calories == a pound of human-grade biological fat cells that include a goodly proportion of water too? Does anyone here biology? Can you clarify for the hard-of-thinking?10 -
Presumably the resolution is along the lines of the 'fat' we gain not actually being pure fat, but leavened with a reasonable amount of water too? So the 3,500 calories == a pound of fat metric actually means 3,500 calories == a pound of human-grade biological fat cells that include a goodly proportion of water too? Does anyone here biology? Can you clarify for the hard-of-thinking?
I was always assuming thats it what it means since even the most fatiest of fat cells must contain some water and proteins to be „alive“.1 -
I have friends that are honestly convinced that one slice of cake that weighs about a quarter of a pound, including frosting and beung very rich, can make you gain at least a pound of weight.
I say physics makes that impossible. Technically you can gain 1/4 pound from that, most of which will quickly be digested and go away. They think I'm crazy and deluding myself. I'm saying it's not possible gor something to cause you to gain more weight than the item weighs.
Is the person being weighed immediately after eating cake or after the 4 oz of cake has been digested? Are they not eating and drinking anything else within a week that might impact their weight?
Body weight or just fat gain? Because body weight can include things like undigested food and water fluctuations.
If you hop on the scale before quickly eating a food and then immediately after eating a food then you will likely only see the body weight increase by the weight of the food. If you wait longer to weigh then other things can be involved in changing the number you see on the scale.
4 oz of cake that is about 400 calories is not going to make someone gain a pound of fat on its own. If the person is exceeding their maintenance calories by enough they can gain a pound of fat but they have to consume more than that 4 oz of cake. If you ate 4 oz of butter (about 800 calories) you would still need to exceed your maintenance calories by 3,500 to gain fat. So you would need to eat or drink something else. Basically you are right that a person will not gain a pound from just 4 oz of cake.
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I should have just said 3/4 pound of weight instead of cake.lleeann2001 wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
oh magnus.......The OTHER 3/4 pound of cake? Maybe Im confused. The subject said a 1/4 pound of cake. Isnt tne other 3/4 pound sitting on the cake table for others to enjoy? Perhaps, I am confuused. Im sure I am. Correct me please... 🌹0 -
It's possible to gain more than the weight of the item if the item is very calorie dense. If we take it to an extreme and talk about 1 pound of oil, that's 4k calories you can possibly gain, which is more than a pound. This, however, is not the case for the vast majority of foods including cake, because some of the weight of the cake is water and it has a mix of macros, not just fat.2
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The maximum calorie density by weight is 9 calories per gram of fats. If one ate a pure pound of pure, compressed fats, I suppose it would have 4,077 calories, while gaining a pound of fat is usually taken to be 3,500 calories because a fat cell is filled with roughly 10% water. So to fill up greater than a pound of fat by eating a pound of fat would still require in take of water.magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
Right?
That's my argument, lol! The response was "It just doesn't work that way. You (meaning me) are just oversimplifying a very difficult concept. You can have more calories than an item weighs. Duh. "
But when you aren't dealing with other intake like water, thermodynamics / chemistry still holds that matter won't be created nor destroyed. I just don't see where it is being explained where the other matter comes from to violate that.2 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »It's a little more complex, particularly simple and complex carbohydrates, if one wants to be inanely technical.
Besides blood glucose, the sugars from carbohydrates in your body are generally stored as glycogen. Glycogen carries about 4 parts water to glucose by mass.
So eating the cake by itself can't increase mass by more than 1/4, but with water, more could be stored than the weight of the food, assuming it was eaten by someone with empty glycogen storage for it.
Practically speaking, for a person at maintenance or gaining, or trying to figure out long term effects, no, you won't gain weight greater than the mass of food you're eating, or even equal as water from it is lost.
Chemistry Son, picking up what your putting down..0 -
They sound like the kind of folks who say "I look at a cookie and gain 10 pounds."5
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CharlieCharlie007 wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »It's a little more complex, particularly simple and complex carbohydrates, if one wants to be inanely technical.
Besides blood glucose, the sugars from carbohydrates in your body are generally stored as glycogen. Glycogen carries about 4 parts water to glucose by mass.
So eating the cake by itself can't increase mass by more than 1/4, but with water, more could be stored than the weight of the food, assuming it was eaten by someone with empty glycogen storage for it.
Practically speaking, for a person at maintenance or gaining, or trying to figure out long term effects, no, you won't gain weight greater than the mass of food you're eating, or even equal as water from it is lost.
Chemistry Son, picking up what your putting down..
This question is more about biology than anything else, which is why it may be confusing and some may think it means matter is being created from thin air. Because fat isn't stored as 100% fat (has water and proteins), you need more than a pound of fat tissue to store a pound worth of fat energy so it shows as gaining more (relatively stable) weight than you put in without breaking the laws of physics. If we're talking pure fat gain, then there is no way eating a certain weight equivalent of energy would produce more stored energy than you put in.2 -
well now i want cake.11
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magnusthenerd wrote: »
The maximum calorie density by weight is 9 calories per gram of fats. If one ate a pure pound of pure, compressed fats, I suppose it would have 4,077 calories, while gaining a pound of fat is usually taken to be 3,500 calories because a fat cell is filled with roughly 10% water. So to fill up greater than a pound of fat by eating a pound of fat would still require in take of water.magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
Right?
That's my argument, lol! The response was "It just doesn't work that way. You (meaning me) are just oversimplifying a very difficult concept. You can have more calories than an item weighs. Duh. "
But when you aren't dealing with other intake like water, thermodynamics / chemistry still holds that matter won't be created nor destroyed. I just don't see where it is being explained where the other matter comes from to violate that.
I don't think it's terribly relevant in this context (though I'm not a biochemist), but there is ongoing matter intake if still alive, that people often forget: We breathe.3 -
HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
If you have a 0.25 lb slice of cake that contains 3500 calories, your weight will initially still only go up by 0.25lbs after you've eaten it.SusieBanyon wrote: »113.3981 grams (1/4lb) is approximately going to be right around 300ish calories depending on toppings and what not. To gain one pound you must eat 3,500 calories or so over your total burn. So, no.
However, you can gain more weight than an item weighs depending on what the item is - there are some very hearty calorie foods out there that are light weight - gainers and such.
Otherwise, using that logic, everyone would gain/lose weight in accordance with the food's weight, so we'd all be eating one strawberry a day, right?
But say a food is as calorie dense as possible. Just absolutely maxes out the possible amount of calories. Ignoring any other conditions, such as good or liquid digested besides the "cake", or any caloric burning off you may do. Just retaining every bite of that cake and nothing else, would it suddenly weigh more inside your body than it did on the plate?
Digestion takes time, and that cake has to pass through your intestines before your body can store any of the energy as fat.
A quarter pound of any food having 3500 kcal is impossible. Fat is the most calorie-dense nutrient, with 9 kcal per gram. A quarter pound is about 113 grams. A quarter pound of fat would have 1,017 kcal, about 29% of the 3500 kcal we think of as equalling a pound of fat. I believe that is an approximation, but I don't know whether it's off by enough to account for the full 4% difference between the weight of the fat you're eating and the predicted calories contained in the stored pound of fat.
Edited because the quote that is showing up is not the message I was trying to quote, which said,But say a food is as calorie dense as possible. Just absolutely maxes out the possible amount of calories. Ignoring any other conditions, such as good or liquid digested besides the "cake", or any caloric burning off you may do. Just retaining every bite of that cake and nothing else, would it suddenly weigh more inside your body than it did on the plate?
It looks like that was from SusieBanyon, but I'm not sure -- the quote embedding on what I quote looks messed up. Sorry, I found it upthread -- it was Momepro who asked about a food as calorie-dense as possible.2 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »
The maximum calorie density by weight is 9 calories per gram of fats. If one ate a pure pound of pure, compressed fats, I suppose it would have 4,077 calories, while gaining a pound of fat is usually taken to be 3,500 calories because a fat cell is filled with roughly 10% water. So to fill up greater than a pound of fat by eating a pound of fat would still require in take of water.magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
Right?
That's my argument, lol! The response was "It just doesn't work that way. You (meaning me) are just oversimplifying a very difficult concept. You can have more calories than an item weighs. Duh. "
But when you aren't dealing with other intake like water, thermodynamics / chemistry still holds that matter won't be created nor destroyed. I just don't see where it is being explained where the other matter comes from to violate that.
I don't think it's terribly relevant in this context (though I'm not a biochemist), but there is ongoing matter intake if still alive, that people often forget: We breathe.
I'm not sure even when hyperventilating that someone can up their matter via breathing. Generally breathing involves taking in O2 and letting out CO2 which is a net carbon atom loss.2 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »
The maximum calorie density by weight is 9 calories per gram of fats. If one ate a pure pound of pure, compressed fats, I suppose it would have 4,077 calories, while gaining a pound of fat is usually taken to be 3,500 calories because a fat cell is filled with roughly 10% water. So to fill up greater than a pound of fat by eating a pound of fat would still require in take of water.magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
Right?
That's my argument, lol! The response was "It just doesn't work that way. You (meaning me) are just oversimplifying a very difficult concept. You can have more calories than an item weighs. Duh. "
But when you aren't dealing with other intake like water, thermodynamics / chemistry still holds that matter won't be created nor destroyed. I just don't see where it is being explained where the other matter comes from to violate that.
I don't think it's terribly relevant in this context (though I'm not a biochemist), but there is ongoing matter intake if still alive, that people often forget: We breathe.
I'm not sure even when hyperventilating that someone can up their matter via breathing. Generally breathing involves taking in O2 and letting out CO2 which is a net carbon atom loss.
For sure, not directly. And O2 mostly used for burning. But, various elements in air, and I would think used in our biochemistry in various minor ways. Is the CO2 out equal oxygen to the O2 input? What about the nitrogen: Used biochemically, or exhaled? Plus there's a bit of other gases, and a tiny amount of water vapor.
I truly don't know what it does: Outside my wheelhouse. But it's matter going in, without eating.
Matter going out on the exhale, too, including most of the products of our lost fat. My point was that there's a matter intake/output cycle at work there that people often don't think about, not that it's a source of significant body weight.
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magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
A physicist, a mathematician, and a biologist are having a beer. They see two people walk into a building, and a little while later three come out.
The biologist says "how cute, they're reproducing!"
The physicist corrects him "we must have miscounted."
The mathematician mutters "if one more person goes into that building, it'll be empty again."23 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »
The maximum calorie density by weight is 9 calories per gram of fats. If one ate a pure pound of pure, compressed fats, I suppose it would have 4,077 calories, while gaining a pound of fat is usually taken to be 3,500 calories because a fat cell is filled with roughly 10% water. So to fill up greater than a pound of fat by eating a pound of fat would still require in take of water.magnusthenerd wrote: »I think the most productive thing is to ask the person, if they eat 1/4 pounds of cake, and nothing else, where does the other 3/4 pounds of cake come from? Honestly, I'd really like to see someone who thinks this try to explain how 3/4 pounds just come into existence.
Right?
That's my argument, lol! The response was "It just doesn't work that way. You (meaning me) are just oversimplifying a very difficult concept. You can have more calories than an item weighs. Duh. "
But when you aren't dealing with other intake like water, thermodynamics / chemistry still holds that matter won't be created nor destroyed. I just don't see where it is being explained where the other matter comes from to violate that.
I don't think it's terribly relevant in this context (though I'm not a biochemist), but there is ongoing matter intake if still alive, that people often forget: We breathe.
I'm not sure even when hyperventilating that someone can up their matter via breathing. Generally breathing involves taking in O2 and letting out CO2 which is a net carbon atom loss.
For sure, not directly. And O2 mostly used for burning. But, various elements in air, and I would think used in our biochemistry in various minor ways. Is the CO2 out equal oxygen to the O2 input? What about the nitrogen: Used biochemically, or exhaled? Plus there's a bit of other gases, and a tiny amount of water vapor.
I truly don't know what it does: Outside my wheelhouse. But it's matter going in, without eating.
Matter going out on the exhale, too, including most of the products of our lost fat. My point was that there's a matter intake/output cycle at work there that people often don't think about, not that it's a source of significant body weight.
The CO2 exchange for O2 is not exact, but rather fixed. Hyperventilating happens because a person's body can no longer provide CO2 that needs removal fast enough to keep up with the O2 coming in - I believe the whole process is a rate limiting feedback so that the less CO2 there is to remove, the less O2 will ever get in.
Atmospheric nitrogen is highly inert. That's what makes the bacteria that lives in symbiosis with legumes so incredible, that they'll alter it. After O2 and N3, there's Argon, which isn't going to react. Then CO2 in the atmosphere which isn't really going in animals.
You do have water vapor in the atmosphere. I'm not sure that we ever take in more water from the air than we expel. I think that would essentially be slow drowning. At the least, I'd move somewhere less humid to eat my cake.4 -
A lot of the oxygen we take in acts as a receptor for hydrogen that is used in cellular energy production, it becomes water.1
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I don't think those friends who say 1/4 pound of cake = 1 pound of weight will be persuaded by biochemistry - they just want to scold you for having dessert.10
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On top of what everyone has said, and I'm not a biologist, but I think that even if one eats a whole pound of pure fat, some of that is expelled (quite quickly I would surmise) without the calories being absorbed and stored in the body.0
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I have friends that are honestly convinced that one slice of cake that weighs about a quarter of a pound, including frosting and beung very rich, can make you gain at least a pound of weight.
I say physics makes that impossible. Technically you can gain 1/4 pound from that, most of which will quickly be digested and go away. They think I'm crazy and deluding myself. I'm saying it's not possible gor something to cause you to gain more weight than the item weighs.
Sure - the wedding cake syndrome.
Bridal party starves themselves all week long to fit into their dresses on Sat, has 1 piece of cake at reception, and gains 5 lbs on Sun. (probably some alchy too!)
They depleted their carb stores below normal on their weigh-in on Sat morning.
Ate a bunch of carbs that stores with water.
Weighed Sun morning.
happens all the time.
In those types of situations - doubtful they stored anything as fat, as insulin would have sent it off to liver and muscle stores for the carbs, fat used as energy source right then for likely dancing along with some carbs.2
This discussion has been closed.
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