Eli5: How come Konjac is almost zero calories? Does it not contain any carbs or fiber?
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The most ELI5 answer:
Konjac stores its energy in a form that it can use, but humans cant. Therefore the plant is considered to be almost entirely fibers. As they arent digestible, konjac has practically no calories.
Now for a more detailed breakdown:
I think it‘s important to clarify the terms here:
– in organic chemistry a carbohydrate is molecule only consisting of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. It is a synonym to saccharide
– sugar and fibers are both carbohydrates
– calories is a measurement for energy, similar to Joules
– commonly „carbs“ refers to carbohydrates that we can process and use
– fibers refers to carbohydrates that we can not use
– for the rest of this comment „useable“ always means „can be digested by humans“
Saccharides can be further divided into mono-, di-, oligo- and polysaccharides. You might recognize these prefixes, but in case you dont:
– mono = single
– di = 2 / double
– oligo = a bunch
– poly = a lot
Mono- and disaccharides are what we commonly call sugars. They include useable sugars such glucose and fructose. But they also include unusable sugars such as galactose (you probably never heard that term. Galctose includes lactose / milksugar, which can be digested by some but not all humans)
We‘re gonna ignore oligosaccharides, as that would cause even more confusion.
Polysaccharides are where the real fun begins. They are chains of hundreds of sugars (no fixed length). Starch is the most well-known. It‘s a way for plants to store energy long-term. Humans can digest starch and utilize its energy.
But there are far more polysaccharides. Cellulose is one as well. It‘s like a net made from sugar, but we cannot digest it at all. It‘s extremely common, plants use cellulose as a basic building block in their cells. Some animals can digest that, for example cows. Their digestive track is far more complex as ours, which is why we can not process cellulose.
Things like cellulose are called fibers. That term refers to any carbohydrate that we cant use. They go through your digestive track untouched.
As i said earlier, starch is commonly used for long-term energy storage, but not all plants use starch for that purpose, and konjac is one of them. More precisely they utilize glucomannan for storage. We can‘t digest that, so it‘s considered 0 calories. That‘s why konjac is so low on calories.
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