logoalt Hacker News

squidgedcricket10/12/20241 replyview on HN

Glucose and ethanol are metabolized through different pathways that will have different efficiencies. How much impact does that have on comparing the two?

Glucose can go right into the bloodstream (?), but ethanol needs to be reacted (taking energy) to turn into blood glucose.

This is a confusion I have about calories-in-calories-out in general, fat/carbs/protein are all metabolized with different (and variable) efficiencies. Even pro-CICO folks agree not to count ingested calories that can't be metabolized, but that's just one spot on a gradient to draw a line.


Replies

positr0n10/12/2024

I know the efficiencies are variable among people and labels are not exact, but if you eat an amount of chicken breast labeled 100 calories, and an amount of butter labeled 100 calories, don't those numbers represent the amount of protein and fat respectively that the average person would absorb?

show 1 reply