Monday, March 12, 2012

Does temperature of a food affect it's caloric potential?

I was just wondering this to myself: which has more calories, hot pizza or cold pizza? Or is temperature not a factor?



This idea came to me when i realized that calories are simply a measure of energy, and heat is a form of energy. So does temperature have any significance when dealing with the amount of energy one would get from a food?Does temperature of a food affect it's caloric potential?
The effect is negligible, as your body is keeping on average 60kgs water at a temperature of 20 degrees or more above ambient. That's a lot of energy from the food, so the calories lost to heat up a slice of cold pizza are relatively small. Remember that calories from food in the diet books are actually kilocalories!
not to mention the fact that food calories are chemical energy and have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH HEAT ENERGY



good lord so many bad answers

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Does temperature of a food affect it's caloric potential?
being a former psycho dieter and a former chem student, the same thought occurred to me. According to my high school physics teacher, you do burn calories if you eat ice, because you're using your body's heat to melt the ice. I eat cold pizza. Smirk.
No it doesn't
calories are a measure of potential engergy--the engery of the chemical bonds in the food itself.
The heat differential would be the amout of heat required to warm the cold pizza to the temperature of the hot pizza. Considering the number of (kilo)calories in a slice of pizza, that would be negligible.



But as a simple answer to your question, yes, temperature does affect caloric potential. Not much, but probably measurable.

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