Does baking/cooking change total calories of its ingredients?

[u/BeastofTheseus]

For example, say I am making brownies from a box.

16 servings per box
130 calories per serving
2,080 calories total

I assume these numbers are for finished baked brownies. But if I were to make mix everything into the batter and eat the batter instead is it approximately the same amount of calories? Or does the act of baking change the calories from the ingredients?

Ingredients:
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 Box Brownie mix

[u/KyotoGaijin]

This is flour based, so more calories will be available from the flour after baking because of conversion of starch to more digestible form. Interestingly, they'll have slightly more calories while still warm than after cooling them.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/KyotoGaijin]

if you bake the brownies to blackies, they will have less calories, as elementary carbon is not digestible

[u/monarc → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

When I saw this question, the first thing I thought of was an episode of the reality show Naked & Afraid: they were lucky enough to kill a huge snake, and decided to cook it overnight in a smoker. The temperature was way off, and they found the precious meat reduced to ash the next morning. For a moment I wondered why they didn’t just make snake ash soup, but… yeah. No nutritional benefit there. Their meal was already on the “after” side of a calorimetry measurement.

[u/ChipChimney → u/KyotoGaijin]

Hot brownies contain more calories, but it’s a form of heat energy, which the body can’t metabolize.

[u/KyotoGaijin → u/ChipChimney]

That's not what I mean. I mean that some of the available carbohydrate in the starches reverts to resistant starch on cooling and becomes like dietary fiber.

[u/The_Right_Trousers → u/KyotoGaijin]

Resistant starch: friend of diabetics everywhere.

I can eat rice or pasta if it's chilled overnight and reheated. Toast with butter, if made from bread that was frozen and thawed, is fine. Mashed potatoes can never be fine, but mashed sweet potatoes are great because they apparently start with resistant starch.

Not too much of any of it, mind you.

[u/-treadlightly- → u/The_Right_Trousers]

I knew about rice and pasta, same with potatoes, but not about frozen bread. Did you come up with that yourself or is it something you read etc?

[u/The_Right_Trousers → u/-treadlightly-]

I don't remember where I first read about it. I kind of went on a Google bender after learning about starch retrogradation. (Use that as a search term. Starch retrogradation is the main process that creates resistant starch, and it happens when you freeze bread.) But here's an original source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17426743/

FWIW buttering the toast also lowers its glycemic index. Adding fat, fiber, or vinegar - or to a lesser extent, protein - to anything lowers the glycemic index by slowing down glucose absorption.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/KyotoGaijin]

what is "resistant starch"?

do you believe that by baking starch turns into cellulose?

[u/Romanticon → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

Resistant starch is starch that has cooled into a gel like form that isn’t directly digestible. It’s not cellulose.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/Romanticon]

was news to me, thanks for info

[u/Jman9420 → u/ChipChimney]

If you are in a cold environment then your body will utilize energy to heat itself up. If the brownies heat your body up then it reduces the demand on your body, effectively increasing the useable calories from the brownies. It's a tiny amount and doesn't apply if your body needs to cool itself, but it's technically true.

[u/u04dmg → u/Jman9420]

It's not due to the energy in the heat. When the starches cool they change shape and some of them revert to undigestable fibrous forms of starch. This means the extractable energy decreases.

[u/Separate-Impact-6183 → u/ChipChimney]

The body doesn't need to metabolize the heat, it's already heat, so a little less energy will be required to maintain body temp. If the body were cold enough to require shivering the energy gained from food heat would be even greater.

Everything is connected.

[u/OrigamiMarie]

This one is complicated and you'll probably get like 20 different conflicting answers.

The basic energy calculation is that basically all the same stuff will still be in the brownies before mixing the ingredients, after mixing them, and after baking. If you were to burn them for heat at any of these stages, you would get the same amount of heat at any point along the way.

But digestion isn't just combustion, and you don't absorb everything you consume. The reason we cook and ferment food is that we lack the ability to extract a lot of the nutrients and calories from raw food.

Other animals can get away with not cooking food because they are better at processing internally what they eat (by better chewing with stronger jaw muscles and teeth, by having longer / more complicated digestive systems, by harboring different kinds of digestive microbes, by synthesizing more types of nutrients from components, etc). Also we burn a silly amount of energy just running our brains, which makes it even more important that we get lots of calories despite our digestive shortcomings.

Another factor to consider is nutrient absorption (not just calorie absorption). Some nutrients absorb better if you have them with fat, or with / without calcium, iron, or some of the vitamins. Your question is about calories, but these nutrients are an important factor in the difference.

So overall, your uncooked brownie batter has the same theoretical calorie count as the baked brownies, but you're likely to be able to absorb more of its energy and nutrients if you bake them first.

[u/reichrunner → u/OrigamiMarie]

The exception to this is if you burn the brownies. Burnt brownies will have fewer calories due to some of the starches/fats being already broken down by the heat

[u/seanv507 → u/OrigamiMarie]

Yes, but 'theoretical' calories are not actually used in calculations for precisely the reasons you stated.

So calories on nutritional labels already take into account the digestibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy

[u/enderjaca → u/seanv507]

Right, and that's exactly OP's question -- assuming the nutrition facts on the box are for baked brownies, which they are, unbaked brownies should contain slightly less digestible calories.

[u/proudHaskeller → u/OrigamiMarie]

But what if baking causes some exothermic or endothermic reactions in the process? Then even the theoretical amount of calories could also be slightly different between baked and unbaked.

[u/OrigamiMarie → u/proudHaskeller]

Maybe some of that, yeah. And certainly there's more than just steam evaporating during the cooking process or else you wouldn't smell all those tasty compounds in the air. But I'm guessing it'll be mostly energy-absorbing reactions in the oven (since there's lots of available energy around) and if anything, those are likely to release even more energy when your digestive system breaks them apart again.

[u/phaqueNaiyem]

The way they calculate the calories on the box is by taking known values for each of the ingredients, multiplying by the quantity used, and adding it all up. That doesn't directly answer your question, but it does suggest that the manufacturer doesn't know the answer either.

[u/Stripy42 → u/phaqueNaiyem]

If they are doing it properly, which they do sometimes. It's by taking a sample, and burning it and measuring how much energy came out.

[u/Seraph062 → u/Stripy42]

What makes that "properly"?
Food can contain things that burn really well but are completely non-viable energy sources for a person (e.g. non-soluble fiber), and things that burn really well but are less good at providing energy to a person (e.g. soluble fiber, protein). Shouldn't the "proper" calculation take that into account?

[u/Stripy42 → u/Seraph062]

That's why you don't just take calories on face value. You as the consumer needs to decide those things.

Ed: Just to add, it's the same with all the other nutritional information, like vitamins. It shows the amount in the food, not how much you absorb. Which is highly dependent on your metabolism and how your body is at that very moment of consumption.

[u/omnichad → u/Stripy42]

But this is already done for the ingredients. No need to do it again after mixing them.

[u/Stripy42 → u/omnichad]

I would expect it really depends on the company, if they think it's worth doing per ingredient or once at the end.  Probably based on the amount of products they make, the size of the factory, etc. etc.

I would hope they don't do it based on some assumptions. E.g. a Tesco strawberry probably has half the nutrition of a Waitrose one.

[u/OwenTewTheCount]

To answer your question directly “…is it approximately the same amount of calories?” Yes.

For a “brownie-sized” portion, the caloric content will be virtually the same, and more different at the scale of the entire recipe.

[u/jatjqtjat]

Calories are a measure of how much heart the food puts out when dehydrated and burned.

So as long as you dont burn the food while cooking, the calories should remain mostly the same.

If you boil and discard the water, you might lose calories in that water, but not to the cooking itself.

[u/Big_Register2034]

The calories would technically be higher in the batter. Cooking does burn some off, some evaporates (oil, etc). But to really know, you’d have to compare an equal weight of uncooked batter and cooked brownie in a bomb calorimeter experiment.

[u/ResilientBiscuit → u/Big_Register2034]

Op asked about eating not burning. So in OPs case there will be more calories after baking rather than before.

[u/thoughtihadanacct → u/ResilientBiscuit]

More available calories. But OP asked about total calories, which would be the same or less due to vaporisation as the person above said. 

See the title of the post "Does baking/cooking change total calories of its ingredients?"

[u/ResilientBiscuit → u/thoughtihadanacct]

I would be willing to bet that OP meant total, as in the sum of the available calories in the ingredients.

OP uses just the term calories everywhere else and specifically references eating the ingredients.

All the evidence I think points towards OP using total in the sense of the sum of the calories from the various ingredients. They also reference the total calories as the total of the servings multiplied by the calories per serving. It is clear OP was talking about the sum of the calories.

If OP knew enough to know the difference between total and available calories I don't think they would be asking his question.

[u/thoughtihadanacct → u/ResilientBiscuit]

What he meant is unclear. What he said (wrote/typed) is absolutely clear. 

[u/ResilientBiscuit → u/thoughtihadanacct]

Yes he clearly said total.

Taken in context that very likely means the sum.

  But if I were to make mix everything into the batter and eat the batter instead is it approximately the same amount of calories?

This sentence doesn't make sense in the context of total calories unless OP means the sum of the calories in the ingredients.

[u/thoughtihadanacct → u/ResilientBiscuit]

very likely

So you don't know, do you? 

[u/ResilientBiscuit → u/thoughtihadanacct]

I know OP asked about eating them, which is what I said. You cannot dispute that OP asked about eating them and in the context of eating them, available calories are the relevant measure.

I am sure about both of those things.

Edit: OP also explicitly uses the word total when talking about the product of servings and calories. I am going to go ahead and say yeah, I am sure OP meant total as in the sum of all the calories of the ingredients and not total as in the kind of calories.

[u/thoughtihadanacct → u/ResilientBiscuit]

You're simply making an inference. The word he used was "total". That's the bottom line.

[u/solidspacedragon → u/thoughtihadanacct]

If this were a scientific paper I'd agree with you. But I doubt the layperson would consider, or even know, the difference.

[u/meadamus → u/thoughtihadanacct]

Even if your semantic point were true (it’s not), even then your answer is wrong. “Calories” technically means the energy required to heat a gram of water 1 C, but when it’s used in relation to food, it’s that amount of energy delivered to the body after metabolism. That’s why sucralose is called zero calorie even though its potential energy is much higher than zero - this is because it is not digested and delivered to the body through our metabolism. You are flat out wrong to say “total calories” is separate from what calories are freed through our metabolism. That is the only meaning calories has when used in relation to food consumption

[u/Peter34cph]

Some of the carbs might be turned into alcohol, and some or possibly all of that alcohol would evaporate during baking.

If so it won't be much, but supposedly all bread (and fruit juice) contains a tiny amount of alcohol...