Stupidity on the web

[newbury]

I was looking at the amount of food 100 calories could get me.
Googled and this turned up :
What 100 Calories Really Looks Like for 25 Foods
But they lost it in the first sentence -

Sure, a pound of gold weighs as much as a pound of feathers

The heck it does - a pound of gold weighs 373.24 grams, a pound of feathers weighs 453.59 grams.

So much for facts on the web.

 

[flyerdan]

Troy vs. Avoirdupois know your weights.

 

[CalG]

one slice of white bread "weighs" 100 calories.
Just about the amount of "weight" it takes you to walk or run a mile.

 

[WinterDeere]

The heck it does - a pound of gold weighs 373.24 grams, a pound of feathers weighs 453.59 grams.

I see what you did there. Tricky.

 

[ponytug]

And food calories are determined by blowing up the food in a calorimeter (high pressure oxygen, plus the food and an igniter inside a steel sphere). Measure the heat rise and you have calories. It is not a precise process, as anyone who has every tried to do bomb calorimetry will tell you.

It just has the small problem that human bodies don't ignite food directly, and the whole absorption and digestion process differs amongst foods, how the foods have been processed, and cooked before consumption. A boiled soybean is fairly digestible, a roasted one not so much, and a meal of raw soybeans is not healthy, nor digestible. Same calories, in theory. Not an accurate branch of the sciences in my view.

Let's just say that they are a little bit, ok maybe not such a little bit, inaccurate.

All the best,

Peter