OP probably wanted an intoxicating drink that is zero calories. The only that would fit that bill would be weed, but you can't really drink that unless it was liquid edibles.
GHB is so strong that it would have basically 0 calories diluted in water. And it has similar effects to ethanol on the GABA receptors
I believe it's actually used as a therapeutic for recovering alcoholics.
Isn't it GHB that is incredibly easy to OD on? Pretty sure I remember hearing of several friends of friends who have died because the line between good night out and dead is razor thin.
Used alone it’s a pretty safe drug and easy to dose if you do any research beforehand. The issue is that most of the overdoses on it happen in alcohol environments and those two make for extremely easy blackout and pass out situations.
Yep, that has certainly given it a bad rap. But used responsibly it’s fun as hell and relatively safe. Feels like a weird offbrand of alcohol with different effects
It's also extremely addictive and arguably the hardest drug to kick there is. Especially physically. Quite common where I live and lots of people got fucked by it
Yeah I mean any of the benzos/alcohol stuff is insanely hard to withdrawal off of. Those gaba drugs are brutal on the body if you’ve been a daily user long enough
Right the point being (and maybe y’all are saying the same thing differently) that you cannot eat/drink week without caloric intake. It needs something to grab on to to mix
I have some THC tonics in my fridge. They usually have some sugar though, because edibles need a fat for the molecule to bond to.
They also sell canned weed seltzers at convenience stores around here.
Smoking is the zero calorie way to get high, but that isnt healthy either
I started taking D9 gummies (normal weed isn't legal here) to try to moderate my alcohol intake. But I had to stop partially because of how powerful the munchies were, but mostly because they gave me the munchies for bourbon.
...to be absolutely clear, D9 *is* normal weed.
The farm bill has a loophole in it where the allowable percentage of D9 in hemp products is measured vs. the product's dry weight. So, with edibles, which are relatively chonky, you can very easily fit enough D9 in to get you blazed without violating the law.
THC-A is another loophole-y way around this; THC-A is what D9 is before you set it on fire, so if you go buy THC-A weed or carts or etc, you're basically just getting mids.
Given the vast difference in the flame intensity I want know the Caloric value of Gasoline. (Since one calorie, lowercase c, is the amount of energy to heat 1 gram of water 1degree (celsius I'd assume))
Edit: looked it up, Gasoline has 11,000 calories in one gram or 11~~00~~ Calories/Kcals in *one gram*.
This amuses me.
Edit: divided by ten instead of 1000. Fixed (tired brain)
Edit2:that's still 156 kcals in a tablespoon. Still high, just not obscenely so
Gasoline contains about 49,000 kJ per kg, which is about 11,700 Calories (capital C) per kilogram.
Not sure how bioavailable those Calories are, but it's a lot of energy.
For comparison, Uranium used in nuclear power stations have an energy density of 18 billion Calories per kg.
Nah, uranium is not very radioactive. Even if enriched it is more of a hazard than a lethal dose unless you make it go (super)critical, which is essentially impossible inside the body unless you replace all your bones with it, Wolverine style.
The heavy metal poisoning is actually the more pressing concern.
I actually have a piece of uranium ore. It's safe to handle, but you should use gloves or wash your hands thoroughly after holding it because of the dust. It's toxic and emits alpha particles, so you do not want to get it inside your body.
I built my wife a homemade dosimeter and needed to test/calibrate it. She loved Chernobyl.
The US military uses depleted uranium for making tank armor and anti-tank rounds, because it’s extremely dense.
Some (poorly-educated) anti-nuclear types have been freaking the fuck out about it because “omg they’re shooting uranium at people”. The issue with that is that depleted uranium is, from a radiological standpoint, extremely safe. It gives off next to no emissions.
The opposite issue is that uranium dust is highly flammable and, like all heavy metals, pretty toxic. When depleted uranium hits something or gets hit at a very high rate of speed (well above the speed of sound) it generates a bunch of uranium dust, and *that* is some nasty shit.
It’s just not a radiological threat.
> When depleted uranium hits something or gets hit at a very high rate of speed (well above the speed of sound) it generates a bunch of uranium dust, and that is some nasty shit.
TBF - if you are choosing to send a chunk of DPU towards someone - their health isn't really something you are trying to improve.
Of course afterwards people might prefer to live in the surrounding area, so lingering residue might impact crops / water table. War / conflicts due tend to tend to result in a great many things that need to be mitigated afterwards.
DU dust doesn’t spread far enough to be a huge environmental issue unless there’s a *lot* of it. Ammo disposal areas can be a problem, for example. The issue is cleaning up the wrecks of vehicles destroyed using DU rounds, or the wrecks of destroyed vehicles that had DU armor. Gotta do something with the wrecks, since as you said people may want to live there, and that’s a hazardous task. Not impossible with the resources the US Army has, but a bit of an issue for a lot of other people.
Yea. If you eat uranium nuggets. You will poop uranium nuggets undigested. However, it is still an alpha emitter, so it could damage the lining of the stomach and intestines where it comes in contact. But alpha partials don't travel far, so it would be surface damage at worst. I don't know if it would affect cancer risk or not.
I've handled Uranium at university. The radiation can't get through the dead layers of skin. So it is perfectly safe.
The lining of your gut is one of the most radiosensitive tissues in the body, so eating a uranium pellet is a very bad idea. I don't know off the top of my head how much it would take to kill you, but I know it's not a lot. The gastrointestinal syndrome caused by radiation poisoning is a nasty way to go. You shit blood and the bacteria in your gut enter your bloodstream, causing systemic infection. All the while, you become unable to absorb nutrients from your food. In 8-10 days, you die.
Any beta or gamma emitters or elements that can be absorbed. Then yea. You are screwed.
I looked up about uranium, and actually, it will get partially dissolved in the stomach. And can be absorbed. So you will be screwed. So it won't entrely just go straight through like I thought initially. A quick look says you will probably die from poisoning and not from the radiation or even from cancer. But if you did survive the poisoning. Then, there is some risk of cancer.
Fun fact: it's impossible to die from radiation poisoning by eating uranium, since the heavy metal intoxication threshold for uranium is actually orders of magnitude lower than the dose needed to kill you from radiation.
I'm not even convinced you can die from acute radiation poisoning from uranium alone, ever*. You would have to ingest more than your volume in uranium.
Cancer rate obviously goes up even from minute amounts, but that applies to almost anything and the increase is tiny.
*: well, with the naturally occurring isotopes, even if enriched; a gram of, say, U-420 will kill you so fast you won't even feel it...
My understanding is that calories listed on a label only include metabolizable calories. Some 'no calorie fat substitutes' are *themselves actually fats*, for example, that cannot be digested. Infamously, olestra was in this class.
Olestra isn't the best example, because it was pulled from the shelves for causing gastro-intestinal distress, but it was definitely listed as zero calories, it was most definitely a fat, and it most definitely has a non-zero combustion energy (ie, the 'flame intensity' they're referring to above with alcohol and gasoline). The molecule that made up olestra was physically too large to migrate through the intestinal wall, and so it just went straight through as waste. The particular issue with the product was that it often went straight through people *a little too well*.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra)
Yes. For example, carbohydrates are usually 4 calories per gram. However, dietary fiber is less metabolizable than regular carbohydrates, and so it counts for less calories - 2 if it's soluble fiber and 0 for insoluble.
Nice! Going further 1 gram of antihydrogen contains/releases 43 trillion calories (too tired to figure out how to divide by a thousand in my head for KCals)
Edit: and would create a nuke level explosion on contact with matter.
There is, kinda!
Eating cold stuff uses up calories as your body has to warm it up. Eating 1kg of -20C ice would use up around 125 kcal, so ice basically anti-calories.
One gram of Antihydrogen turns into 43 trillion calories of energy on contact with normal matter.
Antimatter annihilation is the single most powerful energy producing interaction in the universe. Even a small amount of matter-antimatter mix produces insane amounts of energy.
I suspect if you found a way to burn the antimatter instead of it annihilating it would produce the same amount of energy as a gram of hydrogen. However we can't really test since we've only ever produced single atoms of antimatter.
Edit: re-read your comment. One could technically argue that the hydrogen (in a universe of antimatter) would have the 43 trillion calories. Tmk negative energy does not exist. (One could possibly argue that Entropy+Time is negative energy. Since all systems decay to their lowest energy point given enough time. But then… the energy isn't disappearing just getting spread so thin that no further change can occur)
Edit2: thank you for the scintillating conversation. I love this "high science" stuff.
It's worth noting, that it's an energy of a completely different kind. I bet if we calculated how much energy can be extracted from a kg of gasoline with nuclear fusion, we'd also get some ridiculous number.
> For comparison, Uranium used in nuclear power stations have an energy density of 18 billion Calories per kg.
Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur and oxygen all fuse. If we are allowed to use nuclear reactions the energy density of gasoline is far higher than Uranium.
And if it did, would the caloric value of the gasoline as a negative integer even be the representation of the bio availability? I'd say it'd have to be negative however much energy I have.
👀 might just be a typo, but there seem to be some extra zeros in there. 11,000 calories per gram is... 11 kilocalories by, like, definition. So about 1.5x as energy dense as ethanol.
It has about 3-4 times as many carbon carbon and carbon hydrogen bonds as ethanol, it's not that surprising. Also in same units Gasoline- 46.4 MJ/kg
Ethanol - 29.6 MJ/kg https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Energy-density-of-different-fuels-in-1-and-14_tbl1_353658745
It's one of the reasons replacing gas powered cars is so hard.
31.5 million calories in a gallon, 18 gallons in a tank that can be filled in about 3 minutes. That's a "charging rate" of like 13.2 MILLION WATTS. The energy capacity of liquid fuels is insane.
Yes but also, the majority of driving is short distances. An electric vehicle being recharged overnight from a regular outlet would work for most people most of the time, if they have the ability to plug in lie that.
Agree that gasoline is kind of insanely good at what it does, but also alternatives are currently practical. In addition, gasoline is like, super dangerous.
11000 cal is just 11 kcal my dude, kcal being kilo calories, kilo meaning one thousand (i.e. 11 uppercase C "Calories", if you want to stick to stupid units).
7 "food Calories" (as the US uses) which is 7000 calories (as in the SI unit) per gram
Chemistry nature in me has me often writing out SI units even when they don't make sense contextually sometimes, oops.
Ethanol gets metabolized into acetate which your body can then make into acetyl-coa which is the first part of the Krebs cycle. Its actually easier for your body to use metabolized alcohol than to break down sugar into acetyl-coa
because alcohol the molecule (Ethanol) ITS SELF has calories.
If you could make a 0 calorie alcohol, thats not alcohol, at best its another drug with the same taste and effect, but its not alcohol.
Similar in ways but not really the same, benzos are more acutely addictive and sedating as well.
Spoken from someone who’s dealt with alcohol and benzo habits before.
Phenibut is still readily available in most states in the US.
Protip: don't pick it up as a daily habit, the withdrawals are hellish and last longer than traditional benzo withdrawal.
But GHB has some (absolutely negligible amount of) bioavailable calories, as essentially all of it will be converted to succinate trough multiple pathways. So its energy content is probably close to the universally estimated 4 kcal/g for amino acids.
Iirc, wasn’t Synthehol basically non-alcoholic? Or was it a substance that was priced faster by the body so you wouldn’t be intoxicated? Or am I not remembering correctly?
I always took that to mean that it basically capped you at a light buzz. It took some Romulan ale or Klingon Bloodwine to get you good and drunk. I think Chief O'Brian had a still on board somewhere at one point.
Is there really anybody out there who don't drink alcohol because it has calories?
Of all (harmful) effects alcohol has, the calories are probably the least problematic...
Or to word it differently: Are there people that are fine with consuming a highly addictive substance, which basically intoxicates you and damages your liver. But don't consume it because it does not fit into their diet?
Yes, I know plenty of people that drank a lot and quit drinking because it made them gain weight.
Obviously, this doesn't really apply to someone drinking lite beer. Beer doesn't have a whole lot of alcohol in it. You'd need to drink A LOT for that to matter. But you go around drinking long island ice teas or whiskeys every night, those calories add up quick.
If you drink this large amounts of alcohol everyday, then the calories are not your only (and probably not the biggest) problem. The toxic properties of alcohol will damage your liver, increase your cancer risk and many more things harmful to your
The solution to this is, to drink less alcohol in general not to worry about calories of your drink.
Or to phrase it differently: the Reason why you should not drink alcohol (or at least no large amount of it), are not the calories of the ethanol, but because it is basically a highly addictive poison.
I personally drink too much two nights a week. Will this lead to long term health issues like liver damage and cancer that will reduce my lifespan? Potentially. But those issues have yet to manifest. The issue that very much already applies is the 800+ additional calories that I may consume each of those nights.
Why? Alcohol has so many destructive properties that the calories aren't even worth mentioning. Neurological impairment, raised affinity to violence and liver cirrhosis aren't a consequence of too many calories.
>Neurological impairment
Thats a nice way of saying brain damage. Also cancer especially oral cancer but also colon and breast cancer are worth mentioning. Acute alcohol poisoning.
And more indirect, road accidents, epilepsy and suicides.
And ofcouse heart diseases but calories also play a role altho mechanic is different.
I fully agree, just that most of these aren't caused from overconsumption of calories. They seem to correlate much stronger with alcohol abuse rather than obesity.
I wonder if you could do something like we do for artificial sweeteners, where the molecule fits into the receptor pretty similarly but it can't be broken down. I have no idea how alcohol gets you drunk, so maybe there is no equivalent for a taste receptor for alcohol
To make zero calorie soft drinks, we have to replace the sugar (which has calories) with something else that produces the same effect (sweet taste). That something else is a chemical we call artificial sweetener. To do the same with alcohol, we’d have to replace the _alcohol itself_ (which has calories) with something else that produces the same effect. That something else is a chemical we call drugs. You could try crushing up some benzodiazepines and mixing them with water. But a zero-calorie alcohol drink is literally impossible.
And even in that case, artificial sweeteners (which most aren't really artificial. More like... alternatives. Stevia is perfectly natural) are still sugar. It's just that it's so sweet you only need to use a tiny amount.
So presumably if we could find something (or create something) that has the effect of alcohol but way more potent so you didn't need to use as much of it, that would work.
Though, that would probably create illicit markets like fentanyl has. Fentanyl is basically the same thing but for pain killers. It's EXTREMELY potent so you only need a very very tiny amount... as a result there's a huge black market for the stuff and lots of overdoses.
At least with sugar, there's no cause for concern if you eat too much stevia other than 'holy heck this is way too sweet!' so there's no illicit market for stuff like that. We create a super potent alcohol, it'll just turn into a market similar to fentanyl. And overdosing on super potent alcohol would be just as bad.
Or a different type of alcohol that is indigestible. Or is much more potent, so it is more effective with less alcohol But it also can't be very toxic. I have no idea if such a alcohol exists.
Well, there are sugar alcohols liko Xylithol. Afaik they are all sweet, indigestible and give you the shits if you consume too much of them (note: from personal experimentation I can say that they are not suitable for sweetening soft drinks)
The problem with these holy grail ingredients is that, to be 0 calorie they have to be indigestible, but by being indigestible they naturally have to contribute to your shit. So trying to make a chemical that will contribute to your shit, but not so much as to be an inconvenience is very difficult. Fats are a particular concern because they are by their nature lubricating.
I guess the alternative would be a chemical that can be digested but takes the same or more energy to digest as it produces. Though that would probably have all kinds of unintended consequences.
I guess that those other sweeteners used in drinks (which I hate, they taste so bad), get away with not causing you to shit yourself, by being so sweet, that they can be used in such small amounts that they either don't cause issues or are negible calorie wise due to amount used.
I had a single 0.5L drink based on Xylitol and I started blasting.
Ethyl Alcohol or ethanol itself is a macronutrient, like carbohydrates, fats, and protein. It's fairly energy dense as other posters have said. You can't make ethyl alcohol consumption calorie free as the body uses it as fuel.
We have found some ways to use certain alcohols, namely sugar alcohols, in ways that are very low calorie. The chemistry (and biochemistry) is complex, but the basic level is we are using chemicals that are similar to the chemicals we want to be tasting or eating, but that the body does not easily digest. There are downsides to this, as things that the body cannot digest becomes something that often makes it's way quickly through the digestive system. So the tradeoff to zero calorie foods that are engineered to taste similar to the food they are replacing, is often that they cause gastric distress and make you need to use the toilet urgently. And we have tried this before with fats, such as Olestra.
This begs the question: if you were to design a chemical to replace ethanol, what are you actually looking for? Ethanol itself has a neutral, slightly bitter flavor. Most people don't drink pure ethanol without some additional things in it. Even vodka has stuff other than just ethanol and water, although it's the closest. Most people also don't drink vodka, even high quality vodka, for the flavor on its own, though.
The effect most people are looking for from alcohol is it's effect as a drug, rather than as a food. So perhaps what you're really asking is, can we make a drug that affects people like alcohol, but that is zero calorie? That's a very different question from just "making alcohol calorie free", but the designer drug market exists entirely because people are looking for drugs that effect people in various ways.
As people have explained elsewhere, zero-calorie alcohol is definitionally impossible. That said, in terms of something with zero calories that *acts* like alcohol, it largely depends on what you want from the hypothetical drink.
If you just want the same flavors, then yes, it's currently possible to create drinks similar to certain spirits without containing any alcohol. It's something that a number of companies have been releasing for the past several years - just search for NA spirits - and they're likely to continue improving.
If you want the *feeling* of alcohol with zero calories, though, that's going to be a whole lot tougher. Alcohol intoxication is the result of enhancing and inhibiting certain groups of neurotransmitters in the brain; it's *plausible* that someone could invent a drug that does the same, but unlikely that such a thing would ever reach a consumer level.
> If you want the *feeling* of alcohol with zero calories, though, that's going to be a whole lot tougher. Alcohol intoxication is the result of enhancing and inhibiting certain groups of neurotransmitters in the brain; it's *plausible* that someone could invent a drug that does the same, but unlikely that such a thing would ever reach a consumer level.
What if you vaporized and inhaled the ethanol? This was a trend a few years back
Wouldn't do much of anything for spirits. It might cut down on calories added by things that don't vaporize, but the actual ethanol is going to have the same calories no matter how it gets into you.
Keep in mind that the entire process of distilling is literally vaporizing and then condensing the alcohol.
Alcohol itself has calories and a lot of them. You can take everclear (close to pure alcohol) and cut it with water and it’s going to have calories.
Beer can have more calories cause in addition to alcohol and water it has carbs. Mixed drinks have sugar added to them to make them more pleasant and that added even more calories. But alcohol itself has quite a bit of calories on it’s own.
I won't rehash others point about alcohol itself. There are other chemicals with similar effects to alcohol such as GHB which you could definitely use to make drinks that are calorie free and cause less long term health issues. The problem is that alcohol is a very dangerous drug so other drugs with similar effects are illegal.
The fact that alcohol is such a casual drug is actually bonkers.
Too much too quick kills people and too much over a long period of time kills people and too much and operating a vehicle kills people.
Alcohol is ethanol, and ethanol has energy that your body can use in the form of what we call calories, just like fat, sugar and protein have calories. There is no way to have alcohol without calories because it just wouldn't be alcohol.
You can have drugs with similar effects to alcohol that are calorie free like GHB, but GHB has its own potential dangers, as well as being illegal.
Same reason there aren't zero-calorie carbohydrates or zero-calorie fats/oils.
They calories are core to what makes them what they are. You can only remove the calories from them by removing them entirely.
Imagine a zero-wood oak tree. A zero-metal brick of gold. A bottle of dry water.
You gave a great ELI5 answer, I just wanted to add that zero-calorie edible oils do exist. Olestra is one example, but there are more. They are not popular for a good reason, which is they have very unpleasant side effects which mainly arise from the indigestible oil reaching the large intestine. I added this because I find it interesting, your explanation was already complete.
they exist. they are just highly regulated or straight up illegal. I'm referring to benzos, barbiturates, GHB, etc. those work directly on GABA just like alcohol and since they come highly concentrated when obtained, you only need a little so any nutritional content is negligible in calories.
meanwhile the alcohol molecule itself is large and digestible so after it does it's magic in your brain the liver converts it to something called acetyl-CoA which is basically a building block for fat--not protein--not carb. if you need calories it gets burned. if you don't need calories, this goes into building your beer belly.
if the drink comes with its own sugars along with the alcohol like in beers and wines, that's obviously even more calories. not counting the carbs, a 4% beer is like a can of full fat milk, except your body may not process all the fat in milk but it will definitely process every molecule of alcohol since it is a toxin.
I work in the New Zealand food industry. Here's some information from our food legislation on how to calculate the energy content of food. Some components have an energy factor (i.e. contribute a specified amount of energy per gram). You'll note that alcohol is top of this list contributing 29kJ/g. Fat contributes 37 kJ/g for comparison. So it has a lot of energy.
>For subsection (1), particular energy factors, in kJ/g, for certain components are listed below:
Energy factors for general components
*Component_____________Energy factor*
alcohol_________29
carbohydrate (excluding unavailable carbohydrate)___17
unavailable carbohydrate (including dietary fibre)______8
fat____________37
protein________17
>Source: https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2015L00481/latest/text
Alcohol itself has energy that can be processed and used by humans. There can't be 0 calorie alcohol. However, alcohol is not something that is storable as energy, it must be burned and does not by itself typically stimulate and glycemic response. That's why we see lots of 'sugar alcohols' as sweeteners some of these are fairly inert and pass through us without contributing calories like allulose and some like malitol provide some energy and also zip through you.
Many drinks are on the market that you could consider low glycemic and fairly low calorie but not calorie free but you wouldn't count these calories as carbohydrates and your body wouldn't try and store them. Hard seltzers from various brands are made to kind of be what you might be looking for, other options are some vodkas on the market though that will typically be more energy dense for the amount you drink.
The way our bodies get rid of ethanol in our system (a toxin) we digest it and release energy from it. This get used by the body or stored as fat. For us to not get energy from ethanol either we would need to not break it down, or we would have to bio engineer an alternate way for the body to dispose of ethanol. If our bodies didn't digest ethanol it would remain in our blood streams far longer, which would be harmful to us, and also result in a much higher level of intoxication from less ethanol.
The idea of a non toxic zero calorie chemical than has similar intoxicating effects to ethanol is something people have sought for a long time. Though there doesn't seem to be any success in searching for it. The UK's Dr. Nutt has been trying to bring a chemical to market called Alcosynth or Alcarelle for a long time. The last mention I have seen was 5 years ago, from an article saying on store shelves soon. So don't hold your breath.
Anything the body can digest and turn into fuel for the cells has calories. The body can digest ethanol itself (the type of alcohol in drinking alcohol), so it will always have calories.
Alcohol breaks down into sugars in the body. So alcohol itself will always contain calories. It would be impossible to make a zero calorie alcohol as you'd have to replace the alcohol
Think about it like this - Ethanol is used to fuel cars because it is energy-dense and easily combustible.
I think doing Vodka Soda with a lime twist is about as low cal as you can get for booze.
What would happen if you injected alcohol into your veins (safely lol)…
You would presumably still get drunk, so would it still count as calories if it bypassed your stomach?
ethanol itself has an energy content of about 7 kilocalories per gram. a zero calorie alcohol beverage would just be water.
OP probably wanted an intoxicating drink that is zero calories. The only that would fit that bill would be weed, but you can't really drink that unless it was liquid edibles.
GHB is so strong that it would have basically 0 calories diluted in water. And it has similar effects to ethanol on the GABA receptors I believe it's actually used as a therapeutic for recovering alcoholics.
That’s true, but it’s such a fine line (I’m talking razor-thin) between a good time and feeling like absolute crap.
Isn't it GHB that is incredibly easy to OD on? Pretty sure I remember hearing of several friends of friends who have died because the line between good night out and dead is razor thin.
Used alone it’s a pretty safe drug and easy to dose if you do any research beforehand. The issue is that most of the overdoses on it happen in alcohol environments and those two make for extremely easy blackout and pass out situations.
Hence why its considered a date rape drug.
Yep, that has certainly given it a bad rap. But used responsibly it’s fun as hell and relatively safe. Feels like a weird offbrand of alcohol with different effects
It's also extremely addictive and arguably the hardest drug to kick there is. Especially physically. Quite common where I live and lots of people got fucked by it
Yeah I mean any of the benzos/alcohol stuff is insanely hard to withdrawal off of. Those gaba drugs are brutal on the body if you’ve been a daily user long enough
Everything THC can bind with to be in a solution has calories or isn't edible. Unless you can dissolve THC crystals in water.
THC is famously fat-soluble. That's why it takes forever to get out of your system.
Right the point being (and maybe y’all are saying the same thing differently) that you cannot eat/drink week without caloric intake. It needs something to grab on to to mix
I have some THC tonics in my fridge. They usually have some sugar though, because edibles need a fat for the molecule to bond to. They also sell canned weed seltzers at convenience stores around here. Smoking is the zero calorie way to get high, but that isnt healthy either
…are you saying sugar is fat? What on earth is this supposed to mean lol
Plus THC isn't water soluble so you're just drinking THC with a sugar chaser. Bad product
Bros never heard of emulsion 💀
😂 I know with my tinctures the calories are so negligible a serving size is technically zero calories
Hahaha. I had the same question...
Ingesting your thc orally is far healthier than smoking it. A small amount of sugar won't hurt you.
Yeah, the real health tip is moderation. A gummy a week wont be a significant bump in caloric intake. 14 beers a week on the other hand…
The real bump in calories with edibles is how much I uncontrollably snack when I’m high
I started taking D9 gummies (normal weed isn't legal here) to try to moderate my alcohol intake. But I had to stop partially because of how powerful the munchies were, but mostly because they gave me the munchies for bourbon.
...to be absolutely clear, D9 *is* normal weed. The farm bill has a loophole in it where the allowable percentage of D9 in hemp products is measured vs. the product's dry weight. So, with edibles, which are relatively chonky, you can very easily fit enough D9 in to get you blazed without violating the law. THC-A is another loophole-y way around this; THC-A is what D9 is before you set it on fire, so if you go buy THC-A weed or carts or etc, you're basically just getting mids.
They probably meant D8
Same shops tend to sell all of the above.
Sugar is not a fat. Milk or butter works fine, most places do oil and emulsify it into a drink.
wtf are you saying sugar is good as a fat for thc to bind to?
People always want a low sugar cocktail that doesnt taste like booze. Its why vodka sodas and all the seltzers are so popular
Given the vast difference in the flame intensity I want know the Caloric value of Gasoline. (Since one calorie, lowercase c, is the amount of energy to heat 1 gram of water 1degree (celsius I'd assume)) Edit: looked it up, Gasoline has 11,000 calories in one gram or 11~~00~~ Calories/Kcals in *one gram*. This amuses me. Edit: divided by ten instead of 1000. Fixed (tired brain) Edit2:that's still 156 kcals in a tablespoon. Still high, just not obscenely so
Gasoline contains about 49,000 kJ per kg, which is about 11,700 Calories (capital C) per kilogram. Not sure how bioavailable those Calories are, but it's a lot of energy. For comparison, Uranium used in nuclear power stations have an energy density of 18 billion Calories per kg.
TIL uranium is fattening
Ironically though if you ate some I bet you’d lose quite a bit of weight relatively quickly
You probably wouldn't have to worry about going on a diet ever again.
I knew this whole “calories in, calories out” thing was bullshit! *grabs bag of unleaded Doritos*
Your belly would be filled until your last day
Nah, uranium is not very radioactive. Even if enriched it is more of a hazard than a lethal dose unless you make it go (super)critical, which is essentially impossible inside the body unless you replace all your bones with it, Wolverine style. The heavy metal poisoning is actually the more pressing concern.
I actually have a piece of uranium ore. It's safe to handle, but you should use gloves or wash your hands thoroughly after holding it because of the dust. It's toxic and emits alpha particles, so you do not want to get it inside your body. I built my wife a homemade dosimeter and needed to test/calibrate it. She loved Chernobyl.
The US military uses depleted uranium for making tank armor and anti-tank rounds, because it’s extremely dense. Some (poorly-educated) anti-nuclear types have been freaking the fuck out about it because “omg they’re shooting uranium at people”. The issue with that is that depleted uranium is, from a radiological standpoint, extremely safe. It gives off next to no emissions. The opposite issue is that uranium dust is highly flammable and, like all heavy metals, pretty toxic. When depleted uranium hits something or gets hit at a very high rate of speed (well above the speed of sound) it generates a bunch of uranium dust, and *that* is some nasty shit. It’s just not a radiological threat.
> When depleted uranium hits something or gets hit at a very high rate of speed (well above the speed of sound) it generates a bunch of uranium dust, and that is some nasty shit. TBF - if you are choosing to send a chunk of DPU towards someone - their health isn't really something you are trying to improve. Of course afterwards people might prefer to live in the surrounding area, so lingering residue might impact crops / water table. War / conflicts due tend to tend to result in a great many things that need to be mitigated afterwards.
DU dust doesn’t spread far enough to be a huge environmental issue unless there’s a *lot* of it. Ammo disposal areas can be a problem, for example. The issue is cleaning up the wrecks of vehicles destroyed using DU rounds, or the wrecks of destroyed vehicles that had DU armor. Gotta do something with the wrecks, since as you said people may want to live there, and that’s a hazardous task. Not impossible with the resources the US Army has, but a bit of an issue for a lot of other people.
As long as it stays at about 3.6 roentgen you should be good
You wouldn't really absorb it, it's not bioavailable in it's raw state.
Don't tell me how to live my life, or we're going to figure out if you're bioavailable in your raw state.
Do you ever see a sentence and think *literally no one else has ever expressed what has just been said?*
[r/brandnewsentence](https://www.reddit.com/r/brandnewsentence)
Ha. Of course it exists
Welp time for some gene therapy and solve world hunger
So you’re saying, poop-filled uranium kernels?
Yea. If you eat uranium nuggets. You will poop uranium nuggets undigested. However, it is still an alpha emitter, so it could damage the lining of the stomach and intestines where it comes in contact. But alpha partials don't travel far, so it would be surface damage at worst. I don't know if it would affect cancer risk or not. I've handled Uranium at university. The radiation can't get through the dead layers of skin. So it is perfectly safe.
The lining of your gut is one of the most radiosensitive tissues in the body, so eating a uranium pellet is a very bad idea. I don't know off the top of my head how much it would take to kill you, but I know it's not a lot. The gastrointestinal syndrome caused by radiation poisoning is a nasty way to go. You shit blood and the bacteria in your gut enter your bloodstream, causing systemic infection. All the while, you become unable to absorb nutrients from your food. In 8-10 days, you die.
Any beta or gamma emitters or elements that can be absorbed. Then yea. You are screwed. I looked up about uranium, and actually, it will get partially dissolved in the stomach. And can be absorbed. So you will be screwed. So it won't entrely just go straight through like I thought initially. A quick look says you will probably die from poisoning and not from the radiation or even from cancer. But if you did survive the poisoning. Then, there is some risk of cancer.
If you eat enough of it, it will last you for the rest of your life.
The chemical toxicity would get you long before the radioactive properties. It is a heavy metal that is not chemically stable.
Fun fact: it's impossible to die from radiation poisoning by eating uranium, since the heavy metal intoxication threshold for uranium is actually orders of magnitude lower than the dose needed to kill you from radiation.
I'm not even convinced you can die from acute radiation poisoning from uranium alone, ever*. You would have to ingest more than your volume in uranium. Cancer rate obviously goes up even from minute amounts, but that applies to almost anything and the increase is tiny. *: well, with the naturally occurring isotopes, even if enriched; a gram of, say, U-420 will kill you so fast you won't even feel it...
> U-420 will kill you so fast you won't even feel it While U2 will hold you, thrill you, kiss you, then kill you.
That would explain Uranus.
That yellow cake is a killer
"Forget it. If it's like beer, we'll have some. Three Tequilas. "
My understanding is that calories listed on a label only include metabolizable calories. Some 'no calorie fat substitutes' are *themselves actually fats*, for example, that cannot be digested. Infamously, olestra was in this class.
I'm curious about this. Is this true?
Olestra isn't the best example, because it was pulled from the shelves for causing gastro-intestinal distress, but it was definitely listed as zero calories, it was most definitely a fat, and it most definitely has a non-zero combustion energy (ie, the 'flame intensity' they're referring to above with alcohol and gasoline). The molecule that made up olestra was physically too large to migrate through the intestinal wall, and so it just went straight through as waste. The particular issue with the product was that it often went straight through people *a little too well*. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra)
Yes. For example, carbohydrates are usually 4 calories per gram. However, dietary fiber is less metabolizable than regular carbohydrates, and so it counts for less calories - 2 if it's soluble fiber and 0 for insoluble.
Nice! Going further 1 gram of antihydrogen contains/releases 43 trillion calories (too tired to figure out how to divide by a thousand in my head for KCals) Edit: and would create a nuke level explosion on contact with matter.
43 billion Calories. You just lose a group of zeroes so trillions become billions
Thank you it's been a mentally exhausting day.
I feel that, stranger. Get some r&r, it seems like everyone could use it right now. Feels like the whole year has been exhausting
Be well :)
You as well!
Can there be something like anti-calories? Would normal hydrogen have 43 trillion anti-calories?
There is, kinda! Eating cold stuff uses up calories as your body has to warm it up. Eating 1kg of -20C ice would use up around 125 kcal, so ice basically anti-calories.
> Eating 1kg For the Americans. That's 2.2 pounds of ice that is cold enough to quickly give your mouth frostbite.
One gram of Antihydrogen turns into 43 trillion calories of energy on contact with normal matter. Antimatter annihilation is the single most powerful energy producing interaction in the universe. Even a small amount of matter-antimatter mix produces insane amounts of energy. I suspect if you found a way to burn the antimatter instead of it annihilating it would produce the same amount of energy as a gram of hydrogen. However we can't really test since we've only ever produced single atoms of antimatter. Edit: re-read your comment. One could technically argue that the hydrogen (in a universe of antimatter) would have the 43 trillion calories. Tmk negative energy does not exist. (One could possibly argue that Entropy+Time is negative energy. Since all systems decay to their lowest energy point given enough time. But then… the energy isn't disappearing just getting spread so thin that no further change can occur) Edit2: thank you for the scintillating conversation. I love this "high science" stuff.
Thanks for your understanding of it 🙏 Yeah, it's a fun topic!
It's worth noting, that it's an energy of a completely different kind. I bet if we calculated how much energy can be extracted from a kg of gasoline with nuclear fusion, we'd also get some ridiculous number.
> For comparison, Uranium used in nuclear power stations have an energy density of 18 billion Calories per kg. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur and oxygen all fuse. If we are allowed to use nuclear reactions the energy density of gasoline is far higher than Uranium.
Feels like the bioavailability would be -11,700 since it will kill you.
Only one gram wouldn't kill you
And if it did, would the caloric value of the gasoline as a negative integer even be the representation of the bio availability? I'd say it'd have to be negative however much energy I have.
👀 might just be a typo, but there seem to be some extra zeros in there. 11,000 calories per gram is... 11 kilocalories by, like, definition. So about 1.5x as energy dense as ethanol.
It has about 3-4 times as many carbon carbon and carbon hydrogen bonds as ethanol, it's not that surprising. Also in same units Gasoline- 46.4 MJ/kg Ethanol - 29.6 MJ/kg https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Energy-density-of-different-fuels-in-1-and-14_tbl1_353658745
1 kcal is 1000 calories, so 11,000 calories is 11 kcals.
Gasoline contains a LOT of calories! If you chug a good sized jug of it, you’ll have enough energy for the rest of your life!
200mg shot of gas a day keeps the hunger away
more like a glass (2000kcal/11 = ~181g)
It's one of the reasons replacing gas powered cars is so hard. 31.5 million calories in a gallon, 18 gallons in a tank that can be filled in about 3 minutes. That's a "charging rate" of like 13.2 MILLION WATTS. The energy capacity of liquid fuels is insane.
Yes but also, the majority of driving is short distances. An electric vehicle being recharged overnight from a regular outlet would work for most people most of the time, if they have the ability to plug in lie that. Agree that gasoline is kind of insanely good at what it does, but also alternatives are currently practical. In addition, gasoline is like, super dangerous.
I'm happy now I know this
11000 cal is just 11 kcal my dude, kcal being kilo calories, kilo meaning one thousand (i.e. 11 uppercase C "Calories", if you want to stick to stupid units).
Or “love in a canoe beer”.
It’s like having sex in a canoe: it’s fucking close to water
So Coors light? /s
Do you mean 7,000 calories per gram? That seems ridiculously high
7 "food Calories" (as the US uses) which is 7000 calories (as in the SI unit) per gram Chemistry nature in me has me often writing out SI units even when they don't make sense contextually sometimes, oops.
Ahh ok. Thanks for clearing that up
Ethanol gets metabolized into acetate which your body can then make into acetyl-coa which is the first part of the Krebs cycle. Its actually easier for your body to use metabolized alcohol than to break down sugar into acetyl-coa
because alcohol the molecule (Ethanol) ITS SELF has calories. If you could make a 0 calorie alcohol, thats not alcohol, at best its another drug with the same taste and effect, but its not alcohol.
The company that creates that drug and gets it legally classified as Alcohol will make bank.
Any new substance with the same effects and risks as alcohol would immediately be demonized, criminalized and banned for being too dangerous lol
not to mention heavily regulated by the FDA
Benzos are basically alcohol in pill form, doubt they have many if any calories
Similar in ways but not really the same, benzos are more acutely addictive and sedating as well. Spoken from someone who’s dealt with alcohol and benzo habits before.
Better and safer than benzos, Phenibut helped me stop drinking until the US banned its sale and distribution. Shame
Phenibut is still readily available in most states in the US. Protip: don't pick it up as a daily habit, the withdrawals are hellish and last longer than traditional benzo withdrawal.
Just no! Only because they both trigger the GABA receptor heavily, doesn't mean they're equal
Ding. We have a winner.
Not really. GHB is more like alcohol than benzos.
But GHB has some (absolutely negligible amount of) bioavailable calories, as essentially all of it will be converted to succinate trough multiple pathways. So its energy content is probably close to the universally estimated 4 kcal/g for amino acids.
So we found an alcohol replacement that's almost half the calories. 🤔
And we need much much less of it for a similar effect. I would still choose the traditional alcohol though.
Star Trek has Synthehol, so somebody is at least thinking about it.
Iirc, wasn’t Synthehol basically non-alcoholic? Or was it a substance that was priced faster by the body so you wouldn’t be intoxicated? Or am I not remembering correctly?
It was made to taste exactly like alcohol but not have any "deleterious effects" so it's implied it doesn't get you drunk.
I always took that to mean that it basically capped you at a light buzz. It took some Romulan ale or Klingon Bloodwine to get you good and drunk. I think Chief O'Brian had a still on board somewhere at one point.
It pretty much anyway exists, G. Practically zero cal, similar affect to alcohol, but very easy to overdose on so very illegal.
Is there really anybody out there who don't drink alcohol because it has calories? Of all (harmful) effects alcohol has, the calories are probably the least problematic... Or to word it differently: Are there people that are fine with consuming a highly addictive substance, which basically intoxicates you and damages your liver. But don't consume it because it does not fit into their diet?
I mean, I only drink vodka because it has the least calories per unit of drunk.
Yes, absolutely. Alcohol is simply a ton of excess calories. Just go look at any weight loss subreddit. Or: https://getdrunknotfat.com
Yes, I know plenty of people that drank a lot and quit drinking because it made them gain weight. Obviously, this doesn't really apply to someone drinking lite beer. Beer doesn't have a whole lot of alcohol in it. You'd need to drink A LOT for that to matter. But you go around drinking long island ice teas or whiskeys every night, those calories add up quick.
If you drink this large amounts of alcohol everyday, then the calories are not your only (and probably not the biggest) problem. The toxic properties of alcohol will damage your liver, increase your cancer risk and many more things harmful to your The solution to this is, to drink less alcohol in general not to worry about calories of your drink. Or to phrase it differently: the Reason why you should not drink alcohol (or at least no large amount of it), are not the calories of the ethanol, but because it is basically a highly addictive poison.
I personally drink too much two nights a week. Will this lead to long term health issues like liver damage and cancer that will reduce my lifespan? Potentially. But those issues have yet to manifest. The issue that very much already applies is the 800+ additional calories that I may consume each of those nights.
Why? Alcohol has so many destructive properties that the calories aren't even worth mentioning. Neurological impairment, raised affinity to violence and liver cirrhosis aren't a consequence of too many calories.
>Neurological impairment Thats a nice way of saying brain damage. Also cancer especially oral cancer but also colon and breast cancer are worth mentioning. Acute alcohol poisoning. And more indirect, road accidents, epilepsy and suicides. And ofcouse heart diseases but calories also play a role altho mechanic is different.
I fully agree, just that most of these aren't caused from overconsumption of calories. They seem to correlate much stronger with alcohol abuse rather than obesity.
Thats why i added them to your list of destructive properties of alcohol.
Because people pay good money to do things that can cause harm to themselves but they perceive as fun.
I wonder if you could do something like we do for artificial sweeteners, where the molecule fits into the receptor pretty similarly but it can't be broken down. I have no idea how alcohol gets you drunk, so maybe there is no equivalent for a taste receptor for alcohol
What if you vaporize and inhale the alcohol? I remember this was a thing a few years back.
To make zero calorie soft drinks, we have to replace the sugar (which has calories) with something else that produces the same effect (sweet taste). That something else is a chemical we call artificial sweetener. To do the same with alcohol, we’d have to replace the _alcohol itself_ (which has calories) with something else that produces the same effect. That something else is a chemical we call drugs. You could try crushing up some benzodiazepines and mixing them with water. But a zero-calorie alcohol drink is literally impossible.
Bro thinks he invented benzo-water. Smh I’ve been bringing that in my school lunches since elementary school
Benzos aren't actually soluble in water though
can you use eggs as an emulsifier?
Just stir in benzo powder with mayonnaise, Mr. Fancypants.
brb trademarking Xayonnaise
Then we’re back at square one with calories
This caught me off guard. 10/10 comment
Interesting flex…
And even in that case, artificial sweeteners (which most aren't really artificial. More like... alternatives. Stevia is perfectly natural) are still sugar. It's just that it's so sweet you only need to use a tiny amount. So presumably if we could find something (or create something) that has the effect of alcohol but way more potent so you didn't need to use as much of it, that would work. Though, that would probably create illicit markets like fentanyl has. Fentanyl is basically the same thing but for pain killers. It's EXTREMELY potent so you only need a very very tiny amount... as a result there's a huge black market for the stuff and lots of overdoses. At least with sugar, there's no cause for concern if you eat too much stevia other than 'holy heck this is way too sweet!' so there's no illicit market for stuff like that. We create a super potent alcohol, it'll just turn into a market similar to fentanyl. And overdosing on super potent alcohol would be just as bad.
Or a different type of alcohol that is indigestible. Or is much more potent, so it is more effective with less alcohol But it also can't be very toxic. I have no idea if such a alcohol exists.
Well, there are sugar alcohols liko Xylithol. Afaik they are all sweet, indigestible and give you the shits if you consume too much of them (note: from personal experimentation I can say that they are not suitable for sweetening soft drinks)
The problem with these holy grail ingredients is that, to be 0 calorie they have to be indigestible, but by being indigestible they naturally have to contribute to your shit. So trying to make a chemical that will contribute to your shit, but not so much as to be an inconvenience is very difficult. Fats are a particular concern because they are by their nature lubricating. I guess the alternative would be a chemical that can be digested but takes the same or more energy to digest as it produces. Though that would probably have all kinds of unintended consequences.
I guess that those other sweeteners used in drinks (which I hate, they taste so bad), get away with not causing you to shit yourself, by being so sweet, that they can be used in such small amounts that they either don't cause issues or are negible calorie wise due to amount used. I had a single 0.5L drink based on Xylitol and I started blasting.
Those don't get you drunk, though. There are some that can get you drunk, but they also make you sick or kill you. Like methanol.
True, I should have said this as well. (I did say soft drinks though). Regaddless, they are still technically alcohols.
>that something else is a chemical we call drugs Sorry but this made me choke on my drink, lol
Ethyl Alcohol or ethanol itself is a macronutrient, like carbohydrates, fats, and protein. It's fairly energy dense as other posters have said. You can't make ethyl alcohol consumption calorie free as the body uses it as fuel. We have found some ways to use certain alcohols, namely sugar alcohols, in ways that are very low calorie. The chemistry (and biochemistry) is complex, but the basic level is we are using chemicals that are similar to the chemicals we want to be tasting or eating, but that the body does not easily digest. There are downsides to this, as things that the body cannot digest becomes something that often makes it's way quickly through the digestive system. So the tradeoff to zero calorie foods that are engineered to taste similar to the food they are replacing, is often that they cause gastric distress and make you need to use the toilet urgently. And we have tried this before with fats, such as Olestra. This begs the question: if you were to design a chemical to replace ethanol, what are you actually looking for? Ethanol itself has a neutral, slightly bitter flavor. Most people don't drink pure ethanol without some additional things in it. Even vodka has stuff other than just ethanol and water, although it's the closest. Most people also don't drink vodka, even high quality vodka, for the flavor on its own, though. The effect most people are looking for from alcohol is it's effect as a drug, rather than as a food. So perhaps what you're really asking is, can we make a drug that affects people like alcohol, but that is zero calorie? That's a very different question from just "making alcohol calorie free", but the designer drug market exists entirely because people are looking for drugs that effect people in various ways.
As people have explained elsewhere, zero-calorie alcohol is definitionally impossible. That said, in terms of something with zero calories that *acts* like alcohol, it largely depends on what you want from the hypothetical drink. If you just want the same flavors, then yes, it's currently possible to create drinks similar to certain spirits without containing any alcohol. It's something that a number of companies have been releasing for the past several years - just search for NA spirits - and they're likely to continue improving. If you want the *feeling* of alcohol with zero calories, though, that's going to be a whole lot tougher. Alcohol intoxication is the result of enhancing and inhibiting certain groups of neurotransmitters in the brain; it's *plausible* that someone could invent a drug that does the same, but unlikely that such a thing would ever reach a consumer level.
Phenibut feels like alcohol, kinda.
I keep hearing about phenibut but have no idea what it is or where to find it, is it a prescription medication?
> If you want the *feeling* of alcohol with zero calories, though, that's going to be a whole lot tougher. Alcohol intoxication is the result of enhancing and inhibiting certain groups of neurotransmitters in the brain; it's *plausible* that someone could invent a drug that does the same, but unlikely that such a thing would ever reach a consumer level. What if you vaporized and inhaled the ethanol? This was a trend a few years back
Wouldn't do much of anything for spirits. It might cut down on calories added by things that don't vaporize, but the actual ethanol is going to have the same calories no matter how it gets into you. Keep in mind that the entire process of distilling is literally vaporizing and then condensing the alcohol.
Alcohol itself has calories and a lot of them. You can take everclear (close to pure alcohol) and cut it with water and it’s going to have calories. Beer can have more calories cause in addition to alcohol and water it has carbs. Mixed drinks have sugar added to them to make them more pleasant and that added even more calories. But alcohol itself has quite a bit of calories on it’s own.
I won't rehash others point about alcohol itself. There are other chemicals with similar effects to alcohol such as GHB which you could definitely use to make drinks that are calorie free and cause less long term health issues. The problem is that alcohol is a very dangerous drug so other drugs with similar effects are illegal.
The fact that alcohol is such a casual drug is actually bonkers. Too much too quick kills people and too much over a long period of time kills people and too much and operating a vehicle kills people.
Alcohol is ethanol, and ethanol has energy that your body can use in the form of what we call calories, just like fat, sugar and protein have calories. There is no way to have alcohol without calories because it just wouldn't be alcohol. You can have drugs with similar effects to alcohol that are calorie free like GHB, but GHB has its own potential dangers, as well as being illegal.
Same reason there aren't zero-calorie carbohydrates or zero-calorie fats/oils. They calories are core to what makes them what they are. You can only remove the calories from them by removing them entirely. Imagine a zero-wood oak tree. A zero-metal brick of gold. A bottle of dry water.
You gave a great ELI5 answer, I just wanted to add that zero-calorie edible oils do exist. Olestra is one example, but there are more. They are not popular for a good reason, which is they have very unpleasant side effects which mainly arise from the indigestible oil reaching the large intestine. I added this because I find it interesting, your explanation was already complete.
The body can metabolize alcohol into energy which means it’s impossible for it to be 0 calories.
[удалено]
Calories are the energy released from burning. Ethanol burns.
they exist. they are just highly regulated or straight up illegal. I'm referring to benzos, barbiturates, GHB, etc. those work directly on GABA just like alcohol and since they come highly concentrated when obtained, you only need a little so any nutritional content is negligible in calories. meanwhile the alcohol molecule itself is large and digestible so after it does it's magic in your brain the liver converts it to something called acetyl-CoA which is basically a building block for fat--not protein--not carb. if you need calories it gets burned. if you don't need calories, this goes into building your beer belly. if the drink comes with its own sugars along with the alcohol like in beers and wines, that's obviously even more calories. not counting the carbs, a 4% beer is like a can of full fat milk, except your body may not process all the fat in milk but it will definitely process every molecule of alcohol since it is a toxin.
I work in the New Zealand food industry. Here's some information from our food legislation on how to calculate the energy content of food. Some components have an energy factor (i.e. contribute a specified amount of energy per gram). You'll note that alcohol is top of this list contributing 29kJ/g. Fat contributes 37 kJ/g for comparison. So it has a lot of energy. >For subsection (1), particular energy factors, in kJ/g, for certain components are listed below: Energy factors for general components *Component_____________Energy factor* alcohol_________29 carbohydrate (excluding unavailable carbohydrate)___17 unavailable carbohydrate (including dietary fibre)______8 fat____________37 protein________17 >Source: https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2015L00481/latest/text
Alcohol itself has energy that can be processed and used by humans. There can't be 0 calorie alcohol. However, alcohol is not something that is storable as energy, it must be burned and does not by itself typically stimulate and glycemic response. That's why we see lots of 'sugar alcohols' as sweeteners some of these are fairly inert and pass through us without contributing calories like allulose and some like malitol provide some energy and also zip through you. Many drinks are on the market that you could consider low glycemic and fairly low calorie but not calorie free but you wouldn't count these calories as carbohydrates and your body wouldn't try and store them. Hard seltzers from various brands are made to kind of be what you might be looking for, other options are some vodkas on the market though that will typically be more energy dense for the amount you drink.
Many people already answered the first part, regarding the second one you can have something extremely similar with moderate doses of GHB
The way our bodies get rid of ethanol in our system (a toxin) we digest it and release energy from it. This get used by the body or stored as fat. For us to not get energy from ethanol either we would need to not break it down, or we would have to bio engineer an alternate way for the body to dispose of ethanol. If our bodies didn't digest ethanol it would remain in our blood streams far longer, which would be harmful to us, and also result in a much higher level of intoxication from less ethanol. The idea of a non toxic zero calorie chemical than has similar intoxicating effects to ethanol is something people have sought for a long time. Though there doesn't seem to be any success in searching for it. The UK's Dr. Nutt has been trying to bring a chemical to market called Alcosynth or Alcarelle for a long time. The last mention I have seen was 5 years ago, from an article saying on store shelves soon. So don't hold your breath.
Alcohol is an organic compound that your body can break down. Breaking down things in your body makes energy Energy is calories
Alcohol is one of the four primary macronutrients. Fats, carbs, proteins, and ethanol are the four sources most species can derive energy from.
Ethanol (the alcohol you drink) is a kind of sugar. So, it’s impossible to create ethanol that does not have any caloric contents.
Anything the body can digest and turn into fuel for the cells has calories. The body can digest ethanol itself (the type of alcohol in drinking alcohol), so it will always have calories.
You need to know what a calorie actually is and then you will understand why that is impossible
I think you can get machines to "breathe in" alcohol. with Supposed to still gets you buzzed, but zero alcohol and saves your liver.
Alcohol is technically a sugar. You'd need to remove the alcohol to remove the last of the sugar.
Alcohol breaks down into sugars in the body. So alcohol itself will always contain calories. It would be impossible to make a zero calorie alcohol as you'd have to replace the alcohol
Think about it like this - Ethanol is used to fuel cars because it is energy-dense and easily combustible. I think doing Vodka Soda with a lime twist is about as low cal as you can get for booze.
Only way to get zero calorie alcohol is to vape it. The lowest calorie alcohol drink in pure ethanol form is around 70 Cals per shot.
Sooo, you want synthanol? From star-trek. Gives you head-ach i heard.
Because alcohol contains energy. Asking why can’t zero calorie alcohol exist is like saying “why can’t alcohol not be alcohol”
What would happen if you injected alcohol into your veins (safely lol)… You would presumably still get drunk, so would it still count as calories if it bypassed your stomach?