- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- While strictly true (calories being a measure of energy and valid for both heat and fuel potential), the difference is - unsurprisingly - small :) - Eating a large pizza (1200 kcal) straight from the freezer instead of heating it, gives you roughly 25 less kcal. - It’s harder to chew too, so you might burn an extra 10 to 15 calories there! 
 
- Well duh. If it’s in the freezer that means you haven’t eaten it! 
- So I found this website that lists specific heat capacities for various foods, and while it doesn’t list “snacks”, dry foods values seem to range from 0.3 to 1 cal•g-1•K-1 = 0.0003 to 0.001 Cal•g-1•K-1. Assuming no phase change (i.e., melting) and otherwise temperature-invariant heat capacity, the energy required for heating a 100 g snack from freezer temps (-18 °C) to body temp (37 °C) is 1.65 to 5.5 Cal. More realistically, we can compare to eating an ambient-temp (20 °C) snack; that difference is only 1.1 to 3.8 Cal… in either case, the difference is negligible, generally < 1% of the calorie count of the snack itself. 
- yeah…not sure if it works like that - well i mean, your body loses heat to the cold food, so i guess it’s technically correct? - It is technically correct. A familiar analogy is that it is difficult to light up a fire in cold as the cold wood needs more heat. - Whether it is significant or not is a different matter. 
 
 



