Snacks that are negative calories?
2Over at Woot!, there is on “New Food Deals! Can someone please invent a snack that’s negative calories?”, which got me to thinking that it would take more energy to eat/chew it than it supplied.
Konjac (0.33 cals/g; dietary fiber 1.3%) immediately came to mind, though it would need a great deal of work to make it a snack, I think. Straight out of it’s watery package, it is pretty awful. Everyone knows that. But as tasteless and nasty as Konjac is, there are much lower calorie foods; though to be fair, the amount of chewing needed to eat Konjac is right up there, so it may come in actually lower than the calculated values above based on combustion measurements)
The food should probably be high in fiber, but overall chewable, which eliminates most meats. And the snack should not have been cooked as cooking helps to increase nutrition by breaking down whole unprocessed food making the nutrients within more available.
I am reminded of once giving a rabbit some iceberg lettuce. The rabbit wisely enough would have nothing to do with it.
Iceberg lettuce comes in at 0.14 cals/g and a dietary fiber content of 1.2%. A close second is cucumber at 0.149 cals/g and a dietary fiber content of 0.5%, then celery at 0.16 cals/g and a dietary fiber content of 1.5%. One could conceive that the act of chewing and the energy it takes to try to digest either one would be an overall negative, or close to it, calorie food. Food is a term, which I using loosely here.
Trouble is, I wouldn’t consider, Konjac, iceberg lettuce, or celery a snack in the sense of something that is both appealing and that tastes good.
What do you think? Got any more suggested candidates?
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I mean a good old dill pickle is probably negative between the chewing and digesting… Pretty much impossible to go bad
I like celery. Don’t dislike iceberg lettuce. Or cabbage
Cabbage is high fiber and can be pickled to add flavor with spices.
@unksol As it turns out, I often eat a dill pickle, when I am peckish, but do not want to add significantly to my calorie budget for the day. If one reads the nutrition information on a typical pickle jar, they would have you believe it is 0 cals.
T’aint so. Turns out there is a USDA nutrition work around/exception for labeling if the food in question is below a certain threshold.
In the case of dill pickles, the actual calorie content is about 0.12 cals/g owing the cucumber and the vinegar used.
So 100g (3.5 oz) of dill pickles would be about 12 cals.
Now for the sleight of hand trick to manipulate the calories. On a jar of Mt. Olive dill pickles, the label says that a “typical serving” is 28g (1 oz) and zero calories.
If you do the actual calculation, there is really about 3.4 cals in 28g of dill pickles. But owing to the FDA rules if a typical serving is =< than 5 calories, the label can read zero cals.
I will grant you that the energy involved in the picking up and opening the jar, picking out a pickle and then the chewing and digestion for 28g of dill pickle would either be zero or slightly below. And, and, and, you get ~2/3rds of a days supply of salt and a wee bit of Vitamin K as a bonus.
Whadda deal!
@Jackinga yea I was aware of the labeling shenanigans but energy to digest said pickle etc etc.
If someone is diving that far down the rabbit hole for anything other than curiosity… I’d try and stop them. If they actually want a 0 calorie snack. They are counting to closely
@unksol Well, then water, frozen, if possible would fit the bill. Maybe as an unflavored sno cone, which if the water was take from a well it could be called ground, ground water, aka g^2H2O
So it wouldn’t be exactly tasty, but considering that one has to supply the heat to melt the water, which would absorb some calories, it may well end up being negative.
And then there are all those water enhancers/flavorings that suddenly appeared on the market (sudden as far as I was concerned, though they could have been there for a long, long time.)
A 2g packet of SF Grape Kool-Aid, has 1g of carbs or about 3.8 cals, which if added to a cup of water (237g) would give it a calorie density of 0.0158 cals/g, which if frozen and ground into a SF Grape Kool-Aid sno cone, one could be looking at something that is both tastier than water and negative calories.
Too bad Kool-Aid never came out with Scotch or Bourbon flavored packets.
@Jackinga
It’s kind of difficult to nail down exactly what the flavor of Scotch or Bourbon is, given the range of possibilities. Much depends upon the casks used for aging and finishing, for one thing. I tend to prefer whiskies that are finished in port wine casks. There are some very good ones produced out in Blanco, TX.
@Jackinga I mean straight up flavored ice does technically. There’s a whole thing about how Ice water will burn calories because of energy taken from your body just to warm it up. It’s a deficit but not effective for anything.
But still if someone is counting calories like that. Beyond a scientific query. I think an intervention is called for. They could have an eating disorder.
Anorexia is generally bad
Kale is so repellent that as a snack, it probably has inherently negative nutritional value via causing the return of whatever else was still in the stomach.
@werehatrack I want to say it can’t be that bad… But no one’s ever made me eat it so.
The gist I get it is it bitter wilted lettuce?
But I could see dried and salted? Maybe? IDK
@werehatrack @unksol It’s okay if you make it into kale chips, but that adds olive oil calories (or some kind of oil)
@Kyeh @unksol @werehatrack I used to use kale as the greens in my taco salads. Of course it was more for texture as the spicy bean mixture I put on top with cheese was the primary flavour.
@unksol Fresh, it can be any texture from “firm greens” to “aggressive thistle”, but always bitter and with other unpleasant undertones. My father grew some once, and did not make that mistake again.
Small rocks
@ybmuG In addition to being low calories, they also have the benefit of floating.
@zachdecker like ducks
@ybmuG @zachdecker And witches, in the Python universe.
Ex-lax
@ybmuG Not shit?
@yakkoTDI @ybmuG Not with all that fiber you’re getting.
What about adding some sort of zero calorie sweetener to konjac, and some flavoring, and just making like calorie free fruit snacks or fruitless fruit leather?
Or, like freeze dry some cucumbers, coat in a bit of seasoning like a crispy dill pickle chips?
@smerk85 As for adulterating konjac in the quest for palatability, it sounds like an appalling waste of good seasonings.
@smerk85 Good suggestion. I went looking to see if there was a flavored konjac available. Turns out there is. Check out Sugarlolo Konjac Sweet Peach Jelly Snack - 5.29 Oz (150g) | 10 Pack | Only 4 Calories per Pouch | Vegan Jello with Zero Sugar | Low Calorie Korean Snacks on Amazon. That calculates out to a calorie/gram of 0.027.
Some of the comments describe this as chewy Jell-O, sweet, maybe too sweet, very peachy, with a slight bitterness from the konjac. I would try one, but not a box for $28.95! Chewy Jell-O, eh?
A candidate for negative calories, as most konjac I have ever eaten as noodles was very hard to get down–more like eating tasteless rubber bands, when you knew that the rubber bands would be a whole lot better.
So if I ate a packet of this, made very cold, chewed and chewed, and chewed, and then swallowed with reluctance, the increase in my blood pressure for having paid an outrageous price for it all in combination would maybe push Peach Konjac Jelly into negative calorie territory for me.
YMMV.
@Jackinga @smerk85 I am not sure if you’re all joking or not.
Everydaze’s konjac jelly (one brand out of dozens) is still being sold on SideDeal.
@pakopako @smerk85 Well, since the Meh offering today (4-23-24) is that same Konjac Jelly you spoke of, it sort of made me wonder if someone at Meh was nudged to bring that stuff out of the shadows and offer it?
I did note that the Konjac Jelly adcopy did not allude to or mention this thread in any way.
Though I didn’t respond to your post right way, I did swing over to SideDeal and look at the offering there. I then went to Amazon and looked at it there as well as on the Walmart website, where it is available (has to be shipped.)
I was on-the-fence with actually buying some to try as my experiences with Konjac way back when weren’t the best. I didn’t really want to waste $$ on stuff that in all likelihood I couldn’t give away, if it was unpalatable.
On the current Meh deal, it is $24 for 30, which is a bit over my “what the hell” threshold for trying something like this. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.
I did read the offer thread and there are a couple of folks, who think this is good stuff, and who expressed preferences for certain flavors. It certainly seems to come in nice pastel packaging, but that alone would not be enough to make it an auto-buy for moi.
But thanks for pointing this out in any case.
If you don’t believe in science then all snacks can have negative calories.
@Kidsandliz And organic agave syrup can be better for you than Karo.
@Kidsandliz Well depends on how hard you’re working to snack. Damn those childproof lids!
@pakopako
FIFY
A twinkie.
On top of a mountain far above you. 4000 feet should do
nicely*.
*(Unless you cheat and use some conveyance, or the wind - or a friend - throws the twinkie down to you)
Scotch-flavored chewing gum comse to mind.
In all seriousness, a negative calorie snack comes down to three questions: (1.) is it going to be calorie-free and be consumed without effort, (2.) is it going to be low-calorie and be consumed with humongous effort, (3.) what’s a “snack”
If 1., that limits us to extracts (flavor extracts, sugar alcohols, etc.) and little to no “base” (e.g. an ice-cube drenched in artificial sweetener) – a salt lick might qualify.
If 2., that means anything can be “food” if you chew enough.
https://store.dftba.com/products/dr-dinosaurs-foood-decal-clear
This also opens the floor up to flavored gum, flavored rocks, flavored bark – you never “eat” the “base”, your body just constantly works at trying to digest it before it eventually passes.
Bacteria-laden foods, which will go through you (and take things with them), perhaps not in the consistency or direction you want, can also qualify.
See this nice video of a wine gummy candy: