Can cooked food ever increase in calories from its raw ingredients?

[bitparity]

Example, say I have one medium onion that's 50 calories and one teaspoon of canola oil that's 10 calories. So raw ingredients 60 calories.

But say I slice up that onion, cook it, and now the onion is carmelized. Is the onion now more than 60 calories?

Does the chemical processes involved in cooking actually increase potential calories?

Or on the basis of how calories are decided, (the amount of energy released by burning said object to raise water temperature by 1 degree) will cooked ingredient calories never exceed its raw ingredient calories?

Just curious, for the purposes of calorie counting.

[Permalost]

I'm pretty sure that you can't add calories to something just by cooking it, but you can reduce the amount of water in a food so that it has more calories for its size.

[Tom Kagan]

Obviously, someone's not going to be taking the ACTs and/or the Regents tests in science.

Edit: or is Canadian.

[bitparity]

What's the answer then??

EDIT: There's a reason why "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" is a popular show. Most of us aren't. Could still use an answer though.

[goodlun]

What's the answer then??

EDIT: There's a reason why "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" is a popular show. Most of us aren't. Could still use an answer though.

I'm pretty sure that you can't add calories to something just by cooking it, but you can reduce the amount of water in a food so that it has more calories for its size.

Looks like you have an answer.

[bitparity]

Well unfortunately, Tom Kagan's snarky answer (re: we're science flunkies) puts that into dispute. Was he talking about me or Permalost? Or both of us?

[winnersguard]

Well unfortunately, Tom Kagan's snarky answer (re: we're science flunkies) puts that into dispute. Was he talking about me or Permalost? Or both of us?

The differences are negligible. You might "gain" calories by making something easier to digest (e.g. starches), but you also "lose" calories by burning off fats, alcohols, etc.

[W. Rabbit]

Or on the basis of how calories are decided, (the amount of energy released by burning said object to raise water temperature by 1 degree) will cooked ingredient calories never exceed its raw ingredient calories?

A Food Calorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1 kilogram of water 1 degree celsius. A small calorie is the unit of energy (1/1000th of a Calorie) required to raise 1 gram 1 degree Celsius. I would not use the term "burning" though.

1 Food Calorie is equivalent to a kilocalorie in the energy dynamics sense. So 1 Food Calorie = small 1000 calories or about 4.18 kilojoules (the current SI unit of energy measure).

You cannot add caloric energy to food by cooking it, in fact you will often take calories away (burnt food has less calories, the chemicals required to create energy have been destroyed).

You can however add caloric energy by adding ingredients that contain calories (i.e. butter).

[Tom Kagan]

Which weighs more: a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?

[W. Rabbit]

Which weighs more: a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?

A pound of bacon weighs 1.1 lbs cooked. The extra 0.1 lbs is the added awesome.

[tao.jonez]

In certain cases you can get more calories out of cooked food than from raw. e.g. Feed corn (as opposed to sweet corn).

You can not increase the actual calories that are present, but cooking breaks down the starches into something that is more digestible, therefore you can get more nutrients out of them.

Bones as well - humans can't eat bones, but if you boil them the proteins are released and humans can consume the proteins via the broth.

But no, you can't increase caloric content by cooking.

[Res Judicata]

Ahem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_l...thermodynamics

Snark aside, there are few things going on, as others have mentioned. The amount of energy in food won't increase from cooking, in the sense that if you were to burn it and measure the energy released it would not increase. Cooking likely decreases calories, actually (from burning, release into the cooking medium in boiling, etc.). But our digestive tract is not a furnace. We chemically digest food and then absorb it. You can increase the bioavailability of nutrients through cooking and thus the effective calories of food.

[jnp]

The short answer is no. Cooking food does however lower the amount of energy it requires your body to break down the food into more easily to metabolize parts. Say a cooked steak costs your body 200 calories to break down into molecules it can utilize for energy. A raw steak might cost your body 400 calories to break down.

So while the cooking process does not increase the calorie count, the result is that it causes your body to expend less energy to make use of the food, and that increases the net amount of calories available from consuming it.

[Permalost]

You can increase the bioavailability of nutrients through cooking and thus the effective calories of food.

Eggs are a good example of this.

[bitparity]

Thank you guys, especially jnp. This is very informative. Too bad there's no such thing as a digestability calorie count, eh?