Google and various websites says 28g of pecans is between 185 and 195 calories, how in the world are praline pecans much less calories?

  • ericatty@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Seconding this. 28g of sugar has 108 calories.

    Which roughly just over half the amount of calories in 28 g of pecans (193 calories)

    So simple math.

    28g sugar + 28g pecans = 108 calories sugar + 193 calories Gives you 301 calories total

    28g sugar times 2 = 216 calories 28g pecans times 2 = 386 calories

    Sugar has significantly less calories per gram than pecans.

    When you go by weight, you can really play with the calorie content by substituting calorie dense food (like fats, nuts, oils, avocado) that has a lot of calories per gram with foods that are the same weight but less calories per gram

    Carbs like sugar have less calories per gram than fats, and salt has 0 calories, but it adds grams of weight

    The pralines are substituting some of the high calorie weight of the pecans for lower calorie sugar and salt. So the weight is the same, but the total ingredients have less calories because of the non-pecan stuff used to top off the weight to get to 28g)

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Which is why you should never just look at calories.

      600 calories of candy bars and 600 calories of steak looks a lot different. But will weigh about the same. From memory, that will be about 2 and a half Snickers, and one 8 ounce steak.

      Trying to eat 600 calories of healthy green vegetables would see your jaw fall off before you finished chewing. About 6 heads of romaine lettuce to get you that far. Until you add dressing. Which, generally speaking, will have about 120 calories per ounce. A little more than a candy bar.