diet coke

this episode of dnews is brought to you bydomain.com. zero-calorie foods are all the rage thesedays - but are they really zero calories? and is it even possible for a food to havezero calories? hey guys, tara here for dnews - and i’msure a lot of you out there drink diet soda on occasion, and if so - perhaps you’vefound yourself wondering at times, “how

diet coke, is it possible that this has zero calories?”or for that matter, how can any food have zero calories? it’s an interesting question, and the truthis - they really can’t. aside from water, there is no truly zero caloriefood or beverage. and here’s why you probably

didn’t know that. first off, most foods labeled as having “zerocalories” - actually do contain a small amount of calories. but as long as it’sless than 5, then the fda legally allows manufacturers to round down - meaning a food with 4.9 calories,can still be listed as having zero. splenda, the “zero calorie sweetener,” actually has 3.4 calories per packet. butfor an even better example, let’s look at this product: i can’t believe it’s notbutter spray. it’s advertised as a non-fat, zero-calorie food with a serving size of 5sprays. but it’s actually not zero-calorie, it contains 4 calories for every 5 sprays.and when you consider the fact that its main

ingredient, soybean oil - contains about 120calories per tbsp, then that means the entire bottle - has almost 900 calories, even thoughit’s advertising suggests that it is a zero calorie food. so misleading labels are definitely part ofthe problem. another problem is the myth perpetuated around “negative calorie foods.” theseare things like celery or cucumbers, that contain very few calories - and it’s a commonmisconception that your body expends more energy digesting them, than the amount ofcalories it takes in. unfortunately, there’s really no science to back that up. let’s go back to the example of celery.a single stalk of celery has 6 calories, and

the “thermic effect” of celery - whichis the percentage of its calories you burn by digesting it - is around 8%. 8% of 6 caloriesis about half of a calorie - which means that even after you account for digestion, yournet calorie consumption is still 5 â½. obviously that’s negligible in the long run, but itproves an important point. foods with the highest thermic effect, areproteins - which still only have a thermic effect of around 20-35%. meaning there areno truly negative-calorie foods or beverages. except… for ice water. ice water technicallyhas zero calories, but your body has to expend extra energy to bring it back up to your normalbody temperature - and for 8 oz of water, that burns about 8 calories. so theoretically,if you were drinking 8 8oz glasses of ice

water a day, you’d be burning about 64 caloriesa day - for a year, that equates to 6 ⽠pounds. now as far as weight loss is concerned, it’sminimal - but of course the other benefits from drinking that much water definitely aren’t. now, what about foods that are heavy in mass,but claim to have zero or very low calories? how do those work? well, the idea is thatthose foods are made up of ingredients your body simply can’t break down. if you wereto think about it in very abstract terms, you could almost liken it to eating a pieceof plastic - your body can’t digest it, so it simply passes through your system, meaningyou don’t consume or burn calories from eating it.

now most of the time, foods that are likethat, contain a lot of fiber, which is indigestible by humans - although we still consume it,because it keeps our intestines flowing and healthy. so if you were to eat a big, heavyhunk of food that was almost entirely fiber, it would still have an extremely low caloriecount, because your body can’t absorb any of it. so you see, the idea of a zero calorie food- is pretty much a misconception. almost all foods, even those labeled as “zero calorie”- do contain a small amount of calories. and the only true “negative calorie” food- is water. which isn’t even a food. everything we know is wrong!

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so when you think domain names, think domain.com. in the meantime, let us know in the commentswhat you think of this episode - and if there are any other misconceptions about food you’dlike cleared up. that’s it for me, but as always - thank you guys for watching!