News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for star... by wmblaettler on Monday February 06, 2017 @12:02PM (#13581446)
"Calories Not Absorbed" really got me thinking. While a food is labeled with their potential calories - the amount actually extracted from the food by your gut will vary significantly based on the composition of the food. The bioavailability of calories for example in a cookie versus some fibrous raw vegetable are going to differ significantly, being absorbed at different rates and to differing degrees of completeness.

Here is an interesting article with an important take away: "In general, it seems that the more processed foods are the more they actually give us the number of calories we see on the box" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-hidden-t...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for star... by rubber_duck on Monday February 06, 2017 @01:01PM (#13582128)
I found this recently [1] suggesting that 15-18% of calories from peanuts are excreted. It's probably more for me since they give me digestive problems and that's what made me curios about the subject too.

So I guess eating processed food vs food that's hard to digest actually matters a decent bit if you're counting calories (10-15% of your calories is not insignificant - that's almost half of what you're trying to cut on a calorie restriction diet)

[1]http://www.peanut-institute.org/images/materials_10_19046826...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for star... by winkle on Monday February 06, 2017 @06:03PM (#13585163)
Calories not absorbed has also made me think about diets like the raw food diet. Eating raw uncooked vegetables is going to reduce the calories you absorb while taking up more volume in your stomach.
[ Parent | on HN ]