When you cook, you have the ingredients that you use, and each of those has a certain amount of calories. When you mix them together and cook them, does the calorie count change as they are getting cooked?
Does the law of conservation of energy apply to calories? Where they can’t be destroyed or created, only transferred?
Am I overthinking this?
In: Biology
Your initial assumption is quite good. When you mix ingredients and cook them the calorie count of the final product should be the sum of the calories in the ingredients. And it is usually not far off. However the calories can change during cooking. The obvious thing is of course that there are chemical reactions taking place using up the energy in the food. For example when heating up food then the sugar and fat can start to brake down releasing their energy. But also when you are working with yeasts, for example when baking bread, it also is going to use some of the sugars to produce some heat. However calorie count does not always go down. One thing you might not think about is that the fat you use when frying or searing something will penetrate into the food and you end up with less of it that you throw away. This will increase the calorie count of your food. In addition to this there are some foods that have a lot of energy, but it is not easy to metabolize. Typically food that is rich in fibers and starch have relatively low calories but when you heat it up you convert these into more easily digestible forms such as sugar and their caloric content goes up without adding anything to it.
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