Why do we have to stick with “fitness” versions of food that aren’t as tasty instead of making artificial food that tastes great, makes you feel full and is not a caloric bomb?
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Cause drinks are mostly made of water and sugar and there’s substitutes for sugar which have zero calories.
Your food doesn’t really have a analogue for that. You can lower the calories in food by using spices and stuff which is like the sugar replacement but you can’t replace the water bit with zero cal.
Except for maybe lettuce but that’s because it’s mostly water.
You could maybe infuse a lettuce leaf with cumin for a zero cal burger lol.
There aren’t many safe to consume substances that also aren’t metabolized for energy. Water is one.
Some plants such as lettuce are largely water.
You do have some calorie free versions of various foods. Most notably candy as this is basically sugar which can be replaced with artificial sweeteners. However there is no way to make calorie free fat, protein or many other different food chemicals. So it is impossible to make for example calorie free bacon, although scientists are trying as hard as they can.
. . .how?
Drinks are just water with flavoring and/or sweetener. Foods have to be actual food.
I did see some calorie-free salad dressing though. Not sure how they do that.
Texture and processing.
First, sugar provides substantial texture, think a lollipop, it’s 100% sugar, take the sugar out it’s a few drops of food coloring and liquid flavoring. If you added artificial sweetener, it would still be a few drops of liquid, it wouldn’t be something you could put on a stick. If you made a sugar free lollipop it needs to be made out of something, and it’s a whole science to get the right texture.
It applies to a whole lot of things, frosting, syrup, etc. Often we use sugar alcohols, but those still have calories and tend to cause a laxative effect.
Second, soda is a very processed food, flavoring and refined sugar mixed with water. Meat and flour are not nearly as refined, and you are not really going to refine the sugar out of those things, I guess you could, but you’re not going to have chunks of pepper in your food, you’re not going to see sesame seeds on your buns. Removing sugar from bread might not be too bad, but from a cheeseburger or a pie is totally different.
Food is made up of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc. and while we can replace sugar with other sweet substances that the body doesn’t absorb/don’t have any calories, we can’t readily do so with the other components of food. And we don’t really want to… it’s one thing to pee out some aspartame, it’s another to have loose, oily shits because of modified fats the body doesn’t absorb. There were chips about 15-20 years ago that had some sort of oil that the body didn’t absorb, but then people who ate too many chips got the Olestra shits.
Food is consumed for the purpose of providing energy to the consumer when burnt off through exercise. A calorie is a direct measure of how much energy is released when something is burned.
To create calorie free food you’d have to create food that doesn’t provide energy. Which is barely even food at that point.
Zero calorie drinks have a special type of sugar that has a lot of calories per gram, like a regular sugar. But it’s much much MUCH more sweet so they can use just a tiny amount for the same amount of sweetness. You can use such sugar in your cooking but you can’t make a meat that’s much much MUCH more tastier in order to just use a tiny amount.
I look at the low fat, low calorie things like that ball of plastic in the ocean 100% unnecessary and bad for your health.
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