What makes up the part of food that’s neither carbs, protein, fibre, nor fats?

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Nutritional information doesn’t add up to 100% (or 100g per 100g).

I always thought that ‘fibre’ was a catch-all category for stuff we don’t digest and which thus helps to ‘lubricate’ the digestive tract.
I just realised that’s wrong—and that lettuce has only ~2g of fiber per 100g, which blew my mind also!

So my question is: what makes up the rest of the food we eat?
Thanks! 🙂

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Mostly water, but there’s also the category of “ash” which is not really ash but it’s a catch-all term for all the inorganics (fiber is carbs that are indigestible by us, but might be digestible for other species or fermentation) like salt, minerals, etc. It’s generally not much, something like a couple percent of dry weight, but it’s there.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Water. Most living things are mostly water. Lettuce is 96% water. meat is like 75% water. Even dry fruit like like 20% water. Most stuff you eat is wet enough you can squeeze it and make juice come out.