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Loosing weight on drinking cold beer?

 
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Showberg



Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 1
Location: Denmark

PostPosted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:45 pm    Post subject: Loosing weight on drinking cold beer? Reply with quote

I know this sort of urban legend that says, that if you drink beer that's under 2C cold, then you actually use more energi heating it up in your stomach, than what's actually in the beer. In this way you should, in theory that is, loose weight. So i thought: "Why not do the calculations myself?". Here it goes.

Assuming that beer has the same specific heat capacity as water we can do the following calculations.

C = 4.186 kJ/(K*kg)
m(beer) = 0.330 kg
Energi labeled on the can H = 160kJ/100mL* 3.3 = 532.8 kJ/330mL

[delta]T = H/(C*m) = 532.8/(4.186*0.33) = 382.2 K

The result is, that if you want to loose weight, the beer has to be 382.2 K colder than body temperature, and this is obviously without accouting for the phase shift from liquid to solid. Also this temperature is way below the absolute zero. So my first conclusion should be, that the legend is NOT true.

The assumption that the heat capacity is the same as water is probably not quite good, but i've calculated that if this urban legend is true, then the heat capacity of beer would have to be about 45 kJ/(K*kg).

Anyway my question is: Am I calculating this all wrong? Am I far from making any sence at all in this?

Can anyone help?

/Showberg
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GaryProtein



Joined: 26 Oct 2005
Posts: 535

PostPosted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't remember the formulas to use, but all you are doing when you drink a can of 2 degC beer is raising .330Kg beer 35degC = 11.55Kg-degC. The can of beer contains 532Kj energy, so there is no way you can lose weight drinking cold beer. The alcohol in beer approximately has a specific heat of 2.4, water is 4.186, but the amount of alcohol in beer, approximately 4% can for practical purposes be ignored for the sake of disproving this myth. If you want to be completely accurate, the specific heat of beer would be (.04*2.4)+(.96*4.186) or about 4.115.

After your body raises the temperature of the beer, it still has a lot of energy to burn off in the beer.
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European kiddo
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 5:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The legend came from lack of education among Americans (which is common, sorry! but it's true) and marketing tricks. What you see on a food labels in US is "XXX Calories" with "C" and not with "c". In physics it is used for kcal. European labels must use "kcal" notation and everything is per 100g. So you think that you consume 190 calories, where in fact you consume 190,000 calories. And heating things up with your body doesn't take much energy at all.

So 1 Calorie = 1 kcal = 1000 calories, that's a huge magnitude offset.
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GaryProtein



Joined: 26 Oct 2005
Posts: 535

PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 1:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

European kiddo wrote:
The legend came from lack of education among Americans (which is common, sorry! but it's true) and marketing tricks. What you see on a food labels in US is "XXX Calories" with "C" and not with "c". In physics it is used for kcal. European labels must use "kcal" notation and everything is per 100g. So you think that you consume 190 calories, where in fact you consume 190,000 calories. And heating things up with your body doesn't take much energy at all.

So 1 Calorie = 1 kcal = 1000 calories, that's a huge magnitude offset.


I don't think weight loss by drinking beer or the number of calories beer contains has to do with marketing tricks as much as it does with our lousy non-metric measuring system and the gullibility of people falling for urban legend. You are right in that a food calorie is in fact a kcal. Take a look at how bad our system is: Food calories are correctly written as Calories, with a capital "C". However, the use of the capital "C" has been very long lost and the lower case calorie is now, unfortunately accepted as being correct, even though it isn't. The Calorie, with a capital "C" is equal to 1000 calories or 1 kcal. The daily diet which is called approximately "2000 calories" is really 2000 kcal or 2,000,000 calories. The system is just a mess. It would be great if the USA would just go metric. I don't know why even you use kcal for food instead of joules, the REAL unit for energy. Even the European system for food energies should be improved in that regard.

GO METRIC!

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/

The United States is the only industrialized nation that isn't metric. Only three countries in the world still use our primitive and archaic measuring system. They are United States, and the third world countries, Liberia and Burma. Shame on us.

While were at it, implementation of standard nomenclature for date and time is also in dire need.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html


I needed that little rant and the powers that be in our government that have prevented our metrication deserved it! Smile
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Guest






PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 10:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've heard this, but with ice water. In the case of ice water, assuming a conservative 5 degrees C, that would require a 32 degree rise in temperature. Drinking 232g of ice water would require roughly 7.4 Kcal. Presumably some amount of energy will also be required in order to properly absorb the water from the digestive system once heated to body temperature.

In other words, you don't burn calories by drinking beer due to the (relatively) high caloric content. Drinking a chilled 0 calorie beverage yields a mild increase in weight loss efficiency. Of greater benefit is the noted increase in comfort when drinking chilled beverages when the ambient temperature is in excess of 30 degrees C, as well as the hydrating effects of said beverages.
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NeiNastran



Joined: 04 Mar 2008
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 10:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another thing you have to remember is that your body is at 98.6F. So all the beer you chug runs down the surface of your esophagus which is at 98.6F. By the time the beer hits your stomach, it has warmed up substantially. It makes the problem a bit more complicated.
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gayoc



Joined: 09 Oct 2010
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 4:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A beer can be a healthful way to decrease our weight if we just read the label on each bottle or can. There are beers that contain 0.0 grams of the fat and it follows on the procedure of the Atkins Diet. This is "low-carbohydrate" diet that lets you eat lots and lots of meat.

Last edited by gayoc on Fri Nov 05, 2010 8:50 am; edited 3 times in total
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Dude111



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 142

PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wonder,IS THAT THE SAME FOR ALL DRINKS??

I usually like to drink my soda,etc ICE COLD!!!!!
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Andyson11



Joined: 28 Nov 2011
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 10:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well actually cold beer can literally make you lose weight...Specially if you are all fired up to dance all night because of your drunken sensation

Laughing Out Loud Laughing Out Loud Laughing Out Loud Laughing Out Loud
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