Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: MarianaM on 03/09/2019 14:34:03

Title: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: MarianaM on 03/09/2019 14:34:03
Trent asks...

Is there any food that’s more nutritionally dense than it is physically dense? Meaning, if you eat 100 g of it before going to bed, you’ll wake up 200 g heavier (or at least 101 g heavier?)

What do you think?
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Halc on 03/09/2019 15:43:12
Quote from: Trent
Is there any food that’s more nutritionally dense than it is physically dense? Meaning, if you eat 100 g of it before going to bed, you’ll wake up 200 g heavier (or at least 101 g heavier?)
Mass cannot just be created from nowhere.  You can consume 100g of hypothetical super food with 10,000 calories in it and you will mass exactly 100g more until you take on additional mass in the form of say air or water.

So I might gain more than 1g by eating a gram of salt, but that's because it makes me thirsty and I retain more of the water I drink to rebalance my salinity level.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/09/2019 17:58:37
In a word, no. "Conservation of mass" was your first chemistry lesson, and "you are what you eat" was your first compulsory games lesson when it was too wet to play outside. But that was back in the day when school was about learning, not self-expression.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 03/09/2019 19:08:14
If your hash brownies give you the munchies...?
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: syhprum on 14/09/2019 14:36:03
I think what the correspondent had in mind was are there any foodstuffs that contained a lot of energy in relation to their mass, Mars bars come to mind.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: alancalverd on 14/09/2019 23:12:06
Or glucose, or oil, or Brazil nuts. But none will increase your mass by more than the mass you eat.

But suppose we could find an edible plant that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into fat or protein that we then absorb as food without digesting the original plant, rather like termites farming fungi inside their mounds. The human body can then become a self-sustaining biosphere, independent of farms or shops.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 15/09/2019 10:00:01
Or glucose, or oil, or Brazil nuts. But none will increase your mass by more than the mass you eat.

But suppose we could find an edible plant that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into fat or protein that we then absorb as food without digesting the original plant, rather like termites farming fungi inside their mounds. The human body can then become a self-sustaining biosphere, independent of farms or shops.

Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: alancalverd on 15/09/2019 23:21:54
My hero.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: 4312 on 14/05/2021 11:58:20
it's not about the mass of the product, but about its nutritional value)
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: CliffordK on 14/05/2021 13:20:06
There are foods that can make a person retain water.

So, eat very salty foods, or perhaps dry foods, and they can make you thirsty.   

Thus, if you eat, say 1/2 kg of jerky, plus unlimited water, you may in fact see a greater transient increase in weight greater than the weight of the food consumed.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 14/05/2021 13:28:17
There are foods that can make a person retain water.

So, eat very salty foods, or perhaps dry foods, and they can make you thirsty.   

Thus, if you eat, say 1/2 kg of jerky, plus unlimited water, you may in fact see a greater transient increase in weight greater than the weight of the food consumed.
Not for long.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 14/05/2021 18:54:46
If you eat foods with glucose the glucose is stored semi-long term as glycogen in the muscles and liver. For every 100g of glucose, the body has to absorb about 300g of water to make glycogen. So if you eat 50g of glucose, you'll gain ~200g of weight, provided you also drink.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 14/05/2021 19:38:23
For every 100g of glucose, the body has to absorb about 300g of water to make glycogen.
Why?
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: charles1948 on 14/05/2021 19:42:53
The "natural" food we eat isn't nutritionally very dense.

Couldn't greater density be achieved, by eating physically compact "artificial" pills, containing all the vitamins and minerals that we need to nourish our bodies?

Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Kryptid on 14/05/2021 20:21:38
The "natural" food we eat isn't nutritionally very dense.

Couldn't greater density be achieved, by eating physically compact "artificial" pills, containing all the vitamins and minerals that we need to nourish our bodies?



Multi-vitamins already exist, so I would say yes. Unless you are talking about a pill that also contains all of your daily caloric needs. You couldn't fit enough carbs and fats into one such pill. Multiple pills would be needed.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: charles1948 on 14/05/2021 22:08:37
A single pill would, as you suggest,  probably be too big to swallow.  But we could take (say)  2 pills for breakfast, I pill for lunch, then 3 for dinner, followed by 1 for supper.

Surely the simplicity, and swiftness, of such a pill-based diet must have an intense appeal.  At least to those of us who value our brains more than our taste-buds,
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 14/05/2021 23:02:45
The "natural" food we eat isn't nutritionally very dense.

Couldn't greater density be achieved, by eating physically compact "artificial" pills, containing all the vitamins and minerals that we need to nourish our bodies?


You didn't understand the question, did you?
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: alancalverd on 14/05/2021 23:06:20
 My dog eats "dry" dog food - essentially various bits of animal protein, fat, vegetable fiber, vitamins and minerals, desiccated and compressed into flakes or tablets to save weight and space, and to give her something interesting to crunch and chew. This works fine for domestic dogs because the other 80% of their food comes out of a water tap, and it's good for owners because it doesn't smell as awful as tinned gunge, or bleed all over the refrigerator. But she still can't weigh more than the total mass of food and water.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 15/05/2021 00:08:47
A single pill would, as you suggest,  probably be too big to swallow.  But we could take (say)  2 pills for breakfast, I pill for lunch, then 3 for dinner, followed by 1 for supper.

Surely the simplicity, and swiftness, of such a pill-based diet must have an intense appeal.  At least to those of us who value our brains more than our taste-buds,
You need energy- roughly speaking about 2500 Kcal per day.
The least mass/ bulk of food you could get that from is something like 250 grams of fat.
That's 6 big pills. (not to mention fibre etc)

More importantly, what would one gain from this?
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: alancalverd on 15/05/2021 09:54:51
Weight. We eat for pleasure as well as sustenance, and most pleasurable foods are energy-dense (that's evolution for you!).
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: CliffordK on 16/05/2021 03:52:26
If you eat foods with glucose the glucose is stored semi-long term as glycogen in the muscles and liver. For every 100g of glucose, the body has to absorb about 300g of water to make glycogen. So if you eat 50g of glucose, you'll gain ~200g of weight, provided you also drink.
Why?
Glucose:  C6H12O6
Glycogen: (Glycogenin Protein)((C6H10O5)n

So, every unit, one loses a covalent bonded water molecule.

HOWEVER, other than fat, most molecules in the body would be stored in a aqueous solution.  So, how much water is required to dissolve Glycogen?  I'm seeing a saturated glucose solution in water is about 50/50, so, perhaps the similar for glycogen.

Then there is the weight of the Glycogenin Protein molecule.  It would only count if one is forced to make more of them.

So, direct conversion of anhydrous glucose or sucrose into aqueous glycogen could actually take more weight than expected.

But, of course, there is also ATP consumed (and thus potentially some glucose consumed just to make the glycogen.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Bored chemist on 16/05/2021 11:08:07
I'm seeing a saturated glucose solution in water is about 50/50, so, perhaps the similar for glycogen.
No.
Glycogen is relatively poorly soluble.
Perhaps 20%.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1254356/?page=8
But there's nothing to suggest that it is all in solution while in the liver cells.
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: Petrochemicals on 16/05/2021 17:34:36
All food is because it gives you the energy to gather more food ?
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 16/05/2021 17:49:24
For every 100g of glucose, the body has to absorb about 300g of water to make glycogen.
Why?
Not sure about the physics/biochemistry of it, looks like potassium is also required:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1615908/
Title: Re: Is there a food that’s more nutritionally dense than physically dense?
Post by: charles1948 on 17/05/2021 19:06:51
All food is because it gives you the energy to gather more food ?

Your proposition is correct, in the case of predatory organisms.  Who obtain their food, by actively hunting down prey organisms in order to consume them.  Thereby "gathering", to use your term,  extra energy from the prey.

However, a predator has to expend energy in the "hunting "process.  So there must be a point where the energy
lost in hunting, exceeds the energy gained from eating the prey.  Thereby making the hunting not worthwhile, from an energy- balance viewpoint.

I noticed this once, years ago, when a pigeon landed on a roof next to to my flat.
The pigeon was clearly in some distress.  It was hopping about unhappily, trying to holding  one foot up from the ground as far as it could. Evidently it had suffered some injury to its foot and was in pain.

Out of sympathy, I got a slice of bread, broke it up into crumbs, and threw the crumbs across to the neighbouring roof, that the pigeon was on.

I tried to throw the crumbs close to the pigeon, but some of the crumbs went astray and landed quite a distance  away.  Further up the roof.

But even these distant crumbs, were sought after by the pigeon.  It hopped laboriously up the roof to get a single crumb that had landed a long way away.

I thought  " Surely, pigeon, the pain of getting to that crumb, isn't worth the effort"

I don't know what to make of this.  But it has stuck in my mind.