Eli5: How can edible items have 0 calories in them while still contain nutritional items like carbs (sugars and other sweeteners), vitamins, and amino acids (BCAAs etc.)?
In: Chemistry
Simple: They (or at least most food) can’t.
The amount of vitamins in food is usually small enough that it doesn’t matter, so their caloric value might as well be 0 although they’re considered nutrients. And most artificial sweeteners really have 0 or close to 0 caloric value. Table salt is edible (in small amounts) and has 0 caloric value, and of course plain water is drinkable and also has no calories.
But carbohydrates have calories pretty much by definition, as do amino acids. If you’re eating any of those, you’re eating calories.
They can’t really have 0 calories, but they could theoretically have 0 *net* calories. This means that the amount of energy you get from the food is equal to the amount of energy it takes your body to digest it. So, effectively, it does nothing for you.
Imagine you’re buying and selling items at a market. If you sell an item for the same price you bought it, you have a profit of £0 even though someone gave you money for it. This is like the net calorific value.
They can not:
Carbs have 4.5 calories a gram.
Protein has 4.5 calories a gram.
Fat has 9 calories a gram.
Calories are allowed to be rounded on labeling in the U.S.; but unless something has so little macro-nutrients that it has less than 0.5 calories, it will have calories to have any nutritional value (nutritional value is not the same as supplemental value – like the zero calorie multi-vitamin that has lots of micro nutrients).
However, they are some chemical sweeteners that do not have calories, but the health damage from them is vast, and they are best to be avoided. There are natural and lower calories sweeteners that are acceptable (honey, stevia, coconut sugar, etc.), but the zero cal sweeteners are generally carcinogenic (cancer causing) and best completely avoided.
You can’t have carbs and 0 calories. You can have artificial sweeteners, but that’s the opposite of “nutritional”.
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