What’s the Real Deal With Fats and Sugars?
Does cooking food increase the caloric value? What are the benefits of natural sweeteners versus table sugar? How is fructose metabolized? And what are your thoughts on saturated fat and cardiovascular disease?
Marion Nestle takes on a some of those tough questions about sugars and fats in her blog Food Politics. She is an author and Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health as well as Professor of Sociology at New York University.
She shares her ideas in her blog on January 25:
I wish I could answer all of the questions that come into Feedback or Comments, but I cannot except occasionally. It’s a rainy day in New York and today seems to be one of those occasions.
Q: Does the caloric value of a food change when it’s cooked? In his latest book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human,” Harvard Primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that cooking foods changes the available nutrient content and actually raises the available calories.
A: The rules of physical chemistry tell us that matter cannot be destroyed or created so the number of calories available in a food does not change with temperature. What can change is our ability to use (digest, absorb) the calories that are there as well as our desire to eat the foods. Cooking makes the calories in potato starch more available, for example, but has hardly any effect on the calories in meat. Both, in my opinion at least, taste better cooked. But cooked or not, the calorie differences will be small and unlikely to account significantly for weight change.
The nutrient situation is also complicated. Cooking destroys some nutrients (vitamin C is a good example) but makes others more available (beta-carotene). This is another reason why nutritionists are always advising variety in food intake. Variety applies to cooked and raw, as well.
Read more of Marion’s Q and A…
