The Kitchen

Today, O loyal readers, I am going to reveal to you an arcane gustatory art. It is the very Philosopher’s Stone of nutrition, a means of transmuting base junk food into healthy and low-calorie foods which still tastes delicious. Prepare yourselves! For I shall now demonstrate for you the ancient mystery - BEHOLD!!!

Figure 1!
(An ordinary SNICKERS bar. Drumroll, please.)


Figure 2!
(The excitement mounts! Remember to breathe!)


Figure 3
(SPLASH!!! Ta-da! Le grande finale!)

Got that? We took an ordinary SNICKERS bar (Figure 1), unwrapped it (Figure 2) … and dropped it in a glass of water (Figure 3). In so doing, we converted a high-calorie food with 280 calories per serving into a low-calorie food with a mere 110 calories per serving¹! WOW!

Right?

Uh, no. Of course not. Adding more water to a food technically lowers the caloric density of the final product. And since the serving size remains the same for every kind of food no matter how much water you throw in there, the calories may seem to get lower as well. But the fact of the matter is, you’re not eating any healthier. You’re just dunking your SNICKERS in the water.

Here’s a practical example of a company using the water-logged SNICKERS approach to con you: SmartOnes. Let’s take for example their brownie dessert. At 200 calories for a hefty 3.2 oz (89g) serving, you may think you’re getting quite the nutritive bargain: why, the same amount of a conventional brownie would be a whopping 360 calories²! We're saving hundreds of calories!

Right?

Uh, no. A careful examination of the Nutrition Facts tells a very different story. Those 89 grams of the SmartOnes brownie contains only 45 grams of actual food³. The rest is … water. Yes, the other 44 grams, almost half of the product, is water. And no, this is not “par for the course”. That other, more conventional, brownie that I mentioned before? Only about 10% water.

So the SmartOnes people are playing the waterlogged SNICKERS game. In fact, once you factor the water out, and let the brownies compete on an even playing field, they’re virtually identical. Both weigh in at 200 calories for the same 45 grams of actual food⁴.

I imagine they think they’re pretty smart – and that we’re pretty stupid. This is nothing but junk food passed off as healthy cuisine to busy customers who don't have time to read the label.

The FDA’s serving sizes are too easily gamed by unscrupulous food manufacturers. A far more useful number would be a “calories per gram on a dry weight basis”. You can calculate this number for yourself – and cut through all the lies and deceptions - using this handy technique:

1. Add up the Total Fat, Total Carbohydrates, and Protein numbers


2. Divide the total calories by the number from step 1


3. Eat healthier, by picking a food where this number is smaller.

I guess that’s the real secret I wanted to tell you about in this post. It’s not such a secret, since it’s just a little bit of math, performed on readily available information. Pass it on.

Here’s the math for all you quants out there:

1. 3 oz water + 2 oz SNICKERS = 5 oz. 5 ounces 140 grams in total weight, and since water doesn’t add any calories, the calories are still the same old 280 you got from the SNICKERS. 280 kcal / 140g = 2 kcal/g. Since for the purposes of this example we assume they're suspending the water in the bar (and selling it very, very quickly...), it would keep the same serving size as the conventional candy bar: 2 ounces (56g in the metric or "Communist" system). 56 x 2 = 112, which would be rounded to 110 on the Nutrition Facts panel.

2. These numbers are courtesy of the ever-handy USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, a great resource which you should totally bookmark. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to bookmark individual searches. Just type in the word “brownie” (no quotes), and then select the last one entitled “Fast foods, brownie” (I didn’t want anyone to say it’s not a fair comparison because the SmartOnes product is already prepared, whereas I was suggesting some recipe that would have you slaving away in the kitchen for an hour; not so! This brownie seems to be common in the omnipresent fast food joint, according to the USDA.

3. 4g Total Fat + 36g Total Carbohydrate + 5g Protein = 45g of actual food. While the serving size is 89g. Huh.

4. Change the serving size of the Fast food brownie to 51 grams and tally up the numbers. 9g Total Fat + 33g Total Carbohydrate + 2g Protein = 45 grams. The reported calories for this serving is 207. These numbers are darn close to the SmartOnes (200 calories in 45g).

Furthermore, I suspect that the Fast food brownie numbers are even better than the USDA reported. It appears that the USDA did not test for fiber on this product, or at least did not put it in the entry for some reason. If they had, that fiber would have been deducted from the total calories (if you don’t explicitly single out the fiber, it will just be counted together with the carbohydrates, and receive the same calorie count as sugar, even though it is completely indigestible and calorie free). And I know there’s a lot of fiber, too. These are brownies. The principal flavor of a brownies is cocoa. And cocoa is 1/3 fiber. Take that, Mr. SmartyOnes.