Let's say a simple hamburger has 500 calories (for ease of this example). I eat the hamburger.

Let's say a simple hamburger has 500 calories (for ease of this example). I eat the hamburger. I have ingested 500 calories. I do not eat anything else. Eventually, I have to take a shit. When I do, I lose solids that can be measured by weight.

How is the burger 500 calories consistantly when I obviously don't absorb all of it, and shit some of it out?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I think given the burger always being the same, what changes is how much you absorb of the constant burger

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    eat a burger a day and see how much you shit.

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Why wouldn't it be 500 calories consistently? You think your body is just randomly deciding how much it's going to digest each time you eat the same thing?

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    A calorie is a unit of energy, not a unit of weight. When the mass of the burger goes inside of your body it doesn't "weigh" 500 calories, it provides your body with the potential to extract that much energy from it before all that's left is mushy decomposing waste material that it not useful to your system and is discharged on the opposite end.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Now a question I've had over the years:
      >do people with "faster metabolisms" actually absorb all of the calories from the food they eat?
      Could it be that a notable percentage of the food they eat goes through the other end? Could this be the case for people with "slower" metabolisms as well, but they just absorb more?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You're gonna go down a frickin rabbit hole into the shitstorm that is nutrition if you start asking more of those questions, it all plays back to the gut (and the guy microbiome as well). When I took nutrient gene interactions my Prof made a comment during a lecture about the gut microbiome that fat people have a different biome, and that they actually extract more energy than a skinny person because of it. This was tested against a skinny person that had a fecal transplant from a fat person (essentially introducing the fat person's microbiome into the skinny guy) and they found the skinny dude started gaining weight based off the same caloric intake or something like that. It's an absolute shit show trying to explain every aspect of this

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        no, a faster metabolism means your body's processes are operating at a higher tempo, so will extract the energy more quickly than a person with a slow metabolism. The problem arises when the slow metabolism person continues to eat more food than his body needs. This is a big concern for people who have lost massive amounts of weight, because as you lose weight your metabolism slows. That's part of the reason why people who diet and lose weight, then go back to their old eating habits always regain weight, even if their weight was stable before they went on the diet.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Metabolic rate is what your body does with the energy on the receiving end. Not all bodies process things at equal rates, or use it at equal rates. There are websites which can explain the chemistry of it all, but to give a basic conceptual idea, imagine that you had two carbureted engines. They're the same size, the same displacement, the same fuel running through the same parts, only one carb has been tweaked to burn more lean, and one has been tweaked to have an air-fuel mixture that's more lean and the other has been tweaked to be more rich. While in the context of engines and vehicles, neither of these is good, the lean mixture will have slightly better fuel efficiency (i.e. get more miles out of the gas you put in it) than the one that's rich and eats through more fuel to produce the same results.

        People with high metabolisms are like carburetors that burn more rich. For whatever reason, their bodies burn through the energy provided by calories faster than other bodies do, so in order to maintain "running" status, they need more fuel. It's not that more food is getting pooped out, it's that more of the food's energy is being used to deliver the same results as those with slower metabolisms, which drives them to eat more to maintain body weight.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Could it be that a notable percentage of the food they eat goes through the other end?
        to a certain degree, yes. It changes nothing, you still need to struggle

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Came to say this; just looked up a Mac Donna hamburger, conveniently 250 cal, so let's use two.

      Two burgers would be 196g total, but only ("only") 62g carbs, 18g fat, and 24g protein, leaving 92 grams other shit, which becomes shit.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Came to say this; just looked up a Mac Donna hamburger, conveniently 250 cal, so let's use two.

      Two burgers would be 196g total, but only ("only") 62g carbs, 18g fat, and 24g protein, leaving 92 grams other shit, which becomes shit.

      Forgive me for the way I worded it, it wasn't the best. I know calories aren't weight, but it looks like you picked up on the main drive of my question regardless.

      Going by the latter anons post, the answer seems to be that 92 grams of the 2 burgers are shit your body literally turns into shit. But Is that 92 grams factored into the 500 calories? When we get into the nitty gritty, I don't understand how we can say for certain how much energy we can extract from food.

      • 2 years ago
        Captn Bicep

        Basic thermodynamics, dipshit.
        Stop thinking of food as a burger, and start thinking of it as a container of human fuel. The chemestry is too complicated too explain/ i dont actually know all of it, but what you actually put in your face doesnt matter, because its goona change into completely different chemicals in your body.

        Answer:Google it, but basically, food that can be transformed into energy for your muscles, can be burned and you can measure the thermal energy it expends as it turns into a char. You dont know enough to be bothered by these questions yet, can you even name 11 major muscle groups and their rom?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        1g of protein generate 4kcal
        1g of sugar generates 4kcal
        1g of lipid generates 9kcal
        Not everything in food is made of these three things.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >I don't understand how we can say for certain how much energy we can extract from food
        We don't. Calorie counts are estimates. We would need a perfect understanding of the human body in order to make a perfect caloric measurement of material that fuels it.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Calories is the energy produced if you burn that burger in a pure oxygen.
      It has nothing to do with the energy you absorb from food. Some food can have a ton of calories but you will get nothing from it as your body will use up more calories to dogest it than it will get from it. Calories are not equal to calories. People who think 100 calories in the form of pure sugar = 100 calories from an organge, are complete imbiciles. Counting calories is the dumbest thibg out there.
      It works only if eat the same shit every day and reduce the amount of calories

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The simple answer is the stuff you shit out has no nutrition left

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The 500 calories is an estimation of the amount of energy your body is able to extract from the burger, not the total amount of energy in it. Your body isn't a perfect closed loop, so of course there's going to be waste, even in something like a hamburger that will have essentially no fiber.

    In the 1870's a chemist named Wilbur Atwater did extensive research into this, and quantified nutritional calories for different types of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. He did this by, among other methods, examining human feces to find the degree to which different types of food had been digested.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You're gonna go down a frickin rabbit hole into the shitstorm that is nutrition if you start asking more of those questions, it all plays back to the gut (and the guy microbiome as well). When I took nutrient gene interactions my Prof made a comment during a lecture about the gut microbiome that fat people have a different biome, and that they actually extract more energy than a skinny person because of it. This was tested against a skinny person that had a fecal transplant from a fat person (essentially introducing the fat person's microbiome into the skinny guy) and they found the skinny dude started gaining weight based off the same caloric intake or something like that. It's an absolute shit show trying to explain every aspect of this

      no, a faster metabolism means your body's processes are operating at a higher tempo, so will extract the energy more quickly than a person with a slow metabolism. The problem arises when the slow metabolism person continues to eat more food than his body needs. This is a big concern for people who have lost massive amounts of weight, because as you lose weight your metabolism slows. That's part of the reason why people who diet and lose weight, then go back to their old eating habits always regain weight, even if their weight was stable before they went on the diet.

      Immensely interesting, thank you

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    How is a gallon of gasoline a gallon if there is exhaust? This must mean my car defies the laws of thermodynamics!

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Funny you try to use that analogy to mock me, because I know quite a bit about cars. The main driving goal of engine design in the past 60 years has been to extract more power out of X amount of gasoline, and to reduce the amount of unburnt fuel leaving via exhaust. The problem is not that a gallon of gas does or does not make its way through the engine, but how much torque (what actually moves the car) can we get per X of gasoline.

      So, long story short, you're a fricking moron.

      Hey guys, I burned a log of wood, theres still ashes left though, did the wood really give off that much energy if theres still ashes left?
      You digest most of the "burnable" energy, the rest is "unburnable" shit, imagine grinding a bunch of metal in with wood pulp, the metal is fiber, your shit is the unburnable emtal.

      I guess I am just amazed we have the ability to look at a piece of wood and know exactly how much energy we can get out of it, i.e. how long a fire can burn with it, and how much of it will be left. Seems like witchcraft.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        The analogy fits perfectly. I may be a moron but you’re a fricking autist for overthinking it. Also didn’t read your stupid car facts

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Hey guys, I burned a log of wood, theres still ashes left though, did the wood really give off that much energy if theres still ashes left?
    You digest most of the "burnable" energy, the rest is "unburnable" shit, imagine grinding a bunch of metal in with wood pulp, the metal is fiber, your shit is the unburnable emtal.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Unrelated but has anyone had poop injection? If not you may benefit
    Find out more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_microbiota_transplant

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      No, its only worth it if you have IBS or C diff, usually your gut microbiome changes depending on what you eat, fatties literally have more bacteria that digest sugary shit

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Some of the burgermass is indigestible and doesn't contribute to the calories.
    If you were a different animal it might have a different relevant number of calories.
    We shit out most of the fibre we eat, but soluble fibre can be digested partially by gut bacteria and provide maybe 2 calories per gram (even though it's a carb and should provide 4) or maybe provide none. It depends on what enzymes your bacteria have and what fibre you're eating.
    Also of the chemicals that are digestible, your body can put them through lots of different reactions that aren't perfectly energy efficient so 500 calories may result in 500 calories of expended effort and useful end products, or it may have 100 calories of useless side products like excess heat or other chemicals.
    I'm unsure of how protein should be measured in a diet. If you use it to repair muscle then it wasn't burnt for energy, maybe it has 4 calories when you don't need to repair much and less when more of it will be used structurally.
    Most of these questions aren't necessary for you to plan a diet though, just eat the amount that seems right and then adjust if you feel you're sub optimal.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      thanks you for that picture kind sir

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Youve had your question answered but here to add that, yes there is in fact calories in poop. You are shitting out some of the calories that you eat.

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