upworthy

Evan Porter

Science

Scientist demonstrates the bizarre, explosive method used to determine calories in food

I've been eating food my whole life and never knew this!

Canva Photos

Food energy is real energy, and it can be measured as such.

About ten years ago I started working out for the first time in my life, and with it, paying attention to the food I put in my body for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I never knew much before that about calories, other than the tired "2000 a day" guideline. I could hardly tell you about macronutrients, or how much protein an active person should get. And so, later in my life, I had quite an education.

But there's still a lot that I don't know, apparently, because it wasn't until very recently that I learned where calories come from; or rather, how they're tallied up for inclusion on a food label. Of course, I am familiar with the idea that you can always count up the different ingredients in a meal and their known nutritional values. For example, if you're baking, it's easy to find out the calories in one cup of flour, a tablespoon of sugar, and so on.

But how are the calories in base foods even calculated? And furthermore, how do we know for sure how much protein, fat, or carbs are in certain foods?

It "blew" my mind when I learned that food scientists have a fascinating process for determining the amount of energy contained in different foods. It involves a strange machine called a "bomb calorimeter."


food, nutrition, calories, healthy eating, protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals, eating, science, food scienceAn old bomb calorimeter from the 1960sSeth/Flickr

We all know that food gives us energy, but you've likely never thought of food energy in the same terms as the other different forms of energy like lights, heat, electricity, etc. I know I had never thought of it like energy energy.

But that's exactly what it is, and calories are a very specific measure of that energy.

So in order to determine how many calories are in a certain food, ingredient, or meal — get this — scientists literally blow it up and measure the results of the explosion.

How cool is that!?

In the video below, scientists from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University show the fascinating process from start to finish.

In the experiment, the team prepares a Christmas dinner plate of turkey, gravy, and potatoes. The first step to determining the calories in the meal is to "homogenize it" or blend it into smithereens, destroying any large chunks and turning the meal into a smooth, near-liquid. Yum!

"Then, over the course of three days we slowly remove all the moisture from it in a freeze drier," says Dr. Sue Roberts. Imagine turning that gooey slop into something similar to the consistency of astronaut food.

The dried samples are then compressed into extremely dense pellets about the size of a Tums antacid.

Now here comes the Parr 6200 "bomb" calorimeter. The very precisely measured pellet-ized portion of the original dinner is put into a chamber and lowered into some water inside the machine. An electrical charge is then applied to the food to "explode it."

Why the water? The calorimeter is able to measure the exact temperature of the water before and after the food explosion. When you look at the actual definition of a calorie, which according to Merriam-Webster is: "the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius," it all starts to make sense. Take the temperature of the water after the explosion and you can determine exactly how much energy was contained in the food pellet based on the temperature increase. Amazing!


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The calorimeter first came about in the 1800s. Even then, our understand of heat, energy, and food science was extremely limited.

As recently as the 1700s, scientists generally believed heat was made of some kind of weightless gas, which they called "caloric."

The theory was disproven in 1799 when Sir Humphrey Davy, an English chemist, rubbed two pieces of ice together in a vacuum (which contains no air or gas) and was able to generate friction heat, thus melting the ice. It was roughly around the same time that Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Simon de la Place developed the first calorimeter.

Calorimeters, and the Calorie itself, weren't regularly used for food until the late 1800s.

As cool as it is (and it is extremely cool) exploding food in a bomb calorimeter isn't the most common practice today.

Frankly, it's usually not necessary when you can estimate nutritional values in other ways. More common today is the Atwater System, which estimates calories based on the nutritional breakdown of a food item as such:

  • Four kcals (calories) for one gram of protein
  • Four kcals for one gram of carbohydrates
  • Nine kcals for one gram of fat
  • Seven kcals for one gram of alcohol
All of these elements can be tested and measured in different, fascinating ways. Protein is counted by measuring the nitrogen released from food after putting it through some an artificial digestive process. Fats are measured by weighing the food, then stripping the fats away with ether, and weighing it again.

Carbs are the most complicated and thus are often measured by subtracting the percentage of proteins and fats. The remainders, by definition, should be carbohydrates.

food, nutrition, calories, healthy eating, protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals, eating, science, food scienceThis food is on FIRE!Giphy

And, of course, bomb calorimeters have lots of different uses besides determining the calories in the newest line of flavored Doritos. They can be used to test the energy potential of alternative fuels, find more efficient animal feeds, and analyze samples of oil or coal for their potency.

Understanding this process kind of changes the way I look at food. You can't really see the energy in a bag of chips, let's say, but maybe you can imagine the way it might heat a pot of water if it exploded! It makes the numbers on the back of a nutritional label a little more tangible and real, and can maybe lead to more mindful and intuitive eating practices.

Ultimately, though, there is so much more to food than the calories it contains. There are the nutrients, like the proteins, carbs, and fats — the micronutrients like vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. Some people like to know as little as possible about the inner workings of our food and focus purely on their enjoyment of the making, eating, and sharing. But if you're like me, you like to know the science behind food production, and how and why food powers our bodies the way it does. That's all part of the fun.

From Your Site Articles
food
Kids

Watch a 5-year-old piano prodigy absolutely shred the ivories... while blindfolded

He's preparing to play Carnegie Hall before his 6th birthday.

Canva Photos

A 5-year-old piano prodigy has been invited to play at New York City's most prestigious concert call.

When I was five, the year was 1992. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my whole world, I was getting ready to start kindergarten, and the most pressing issue on my mind was what to put on my Christmas list (Answer: A Sega Genesis). I took piano lessons around that age, but gave it up after a few years because I was more interested in other things (like my Sega Genesis).

Five-year-old Armenian-American Alec Van Khajadourian has taken a slightly different approach. His natural talent, passion, and work ethic have turned him into one of the most skilled pianists of his age in the entire world. In other words, he's a prodigy.

The child began showing his natural talents at the age of two. By age three-and-a-half, his piano teacher discovered that Alec has "perfect pitch" which is a rare and unique ability some people seem to be born with that allows them to correctly identify any note they hear. Think of it like photographic memory for music. Only about 1 in 10,000 people have the ability, which comes from a combination of genetic predisposition and early exposure to music.

When he was four, he performed his first recital alongside fifth graders (usually age 10-11). By five, he had won multiple international music competitions.

“When he started walking, he’d go right to the piano, tapping keys and smiling from ear to ear,” his father said in an interview. “We could tell right away that he had a special connection to music, and his skills have developed incredibly quickly.”

His parents have been posting some of Alec's incredible performances online to a social media account they manage, including one where he attempts an extremely challenging piece while wearing a blindfold.

The selection, one of Alec's favorites, is "Flamenco" by W. Gillock. It's an extremely inventive and upbeat piece that's fun to play and relatively easy to learn due to its composition and symmetry, but it requires some advanced hand, wrist, and finger techniques to pull off at a high level.

It also helps if you have your eyesight available. But that doesn't seem to hinder Alec very much in this clip.

After a video of Alec showing off his incredible perfect pitch skills went viral, local news stations around the country started picking up his story.

People just couldn't believe what those tiny hands could do on the ivories, and they got so much joy out of watching how much Alec loves to play.

"bravo to this young boy! The future looks bright" one commenter wrote.

"Cuteness overload and a little prodigy!" someone said.

"So cool, keep up the good work dude!" added another.

Did you know that there's actually a specific definition of the word "prodigy"?

I always thought a prodigy was any young kid who showed exceptional abilities in a given field. While that's accurate, the true definition is a little more specific.

Prodigy specifically refers to a child under the age of 10 who can perform at the level of a highly-trained adult.

Watching Alec play, it's clear that at the age of five he's well beyond the level that most adults could reach without serious training. The finger movement, wrist positioning, and playing speed are remarkable. And he does it all while his arms are too short to reach the whole set of keys—watch him slide up and down the bench so that he can play the full scale. It's incredible.

The obvious question that Alec's parents get a lot is whether they're pushing him into it. They say that Alec is completely self-driven and motivated, and that their job is to nurture his talent—as long as he wants them to.

“As long as it brings him joy, we’ll continue to support him," Alec's father said.

In interviews, they say Alec is really a normal five-year-old in most ways. He plays with the family dog, loves video games, and goes to pre-school. But his entire demeanor changes when he sits down at the piano. He brings an intense focus to his craft while still managing to take joy in playing.

“It makes me feel good,” Alec told NBC Los Angeles. “It feels calm.”

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

What's next for Alec? Well, his whole life, for starters. But more immediately, he's been invited to perform at Carnegie Hall and Disney Concert Hall.

The pianist was four years old when he decided he one day wanted to play at New York City's Carnegie Hall, one of the most storied and legendary musical venues in the United States. When his skills began going viral, it wasn't long before he received an invite to perform there. Achieving his lifelong dream before he even turns six—not bad!

He'll play at the NY Classic Debut Awards Gala Concert in July 2025.

Alec is also beginning to compose his own music. For reference, Mozart wrote his own first composition when he was only five and, suffice it to say, it still slaps.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

I've always wondered why we're so fascinated with child prodigies.

It's inherently fun and surprising to see tiny people excelling at things far beyond their years. But I think it's also enjoyable to imagine what it would be like to find something you're passionate about and extremely good at from a young age. For many of us, it takes years and years, decades even, to find even one or the other—let alone both.

Prodigies, especially in the social media age, always face a critical transition at some point. When the novelty of their young age begins to wear off and people stop being amazed at their precociousness, what do they do? Do they double down on their craft and solidify themselves as a true master, or do they take the opportunity to let go of the fame and go live a more "normal" life?

Alec has a bright future ahead of him in music, that much is for sure. We can't wait to see where his talents take him, on the piano or otherwise.

From Your Site Articles
prodigy
Mental Health

Woman discovers trick to instantly feel better about how you look in photos: 'ZOOM OUT I beg'

"I promise you’ll look back at those photos ... and see the bigger picture."

Canva Photos

25-year-old woman urges people to stop zooming in on photos.

Millennials in the early 2000s were really enjoying the perks of digital photos and cameras, which were relatively new at the time. I know, it's hard to imagine. We had small, physical cameras with memory cards that we'd carry around with us on a night out, even just to the bar. We would take photos all night—hundreds and hundreds of them. They were blurry, poorly lit, and candid. People were always making awkward faces in the background or being shown at unflattering angles.

We didn't care. We posted every single one of them to a Facebook album, tagged our friends, and let them live there permanently. Can you imagine?!

Things work a little differently now. Our online lives are a lot more curated. We don't post every photo we take, and in fact, all of us intuitively utilize a careful vetting process when we take group pictures or selfies. We snap the pic, or a few, and immediately go to look how it turned out. If it doesn't meet the standards of how we want ourselves to look in a public facing photo, it doesn't get posted. Worse, it might be deleted on the spot, the memory of that moment vanishing forever.

body image, selfies, photography, photos, body positivity, self esteem, self worth, psychology, technologyTake me back to when we hardly cared what we looked like in selfies.Giphy

25-year-old Emma-Kirsty Fraser has a theory on why we seem to be so much more selective, even flat out disgusted, with pictures of ourselves these days: It's the damn zoom.

In a recent Instagram reel, Fraser posted a photo of herself as the camera zoomed in the parts of her body she tends to over-examine in photos: Her arms, chin, midsection, and legs.

"Image the brainwashing required to get us to see this," she says as the camera bounces around to all the most self-critiqued parts of her body. "Instead of this!"

The camera then cuts to the full photo, of Fraser laughing and chatting with friends. It's a fun and beautiful moment, full of life. It captures a moment in time, friendship, love, and joy. No one in their right mind would see the photo and have any thoughts whatsoever about the shape of her chin or the size of her arms. But we've all been conditioned to hyper-analyze every pixel when it comes to our own body and how we think we come across in photos.

"ZOOM OUT I beg ... I think it’s quite terrifying when you realise how much brainwashing it took to get you to zoom in and criticise yourself in so much detail? Like if you showed 8 year old Emma a photo of herself there’s no way she would zoom in," Fraser captioned the post.

"There is so much more to life than the way your body looks and I promise you’ll look back at those photos (because you’re not going to delete them anymore!!!) and see the bigger picture, not your skin/body/blemishes."

Believe it or not, "pinch zooming" in on photos is a relatively new phenomenon that cropped up within the last 20 years.

Most experts credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) the iPhone with innovating and popularizing the feature around 2007. In a few years, it was available on Android phones as well. It didn't take long from there for us to ditch our Nikon Coolpix cameras and start exclusively taking photographs on our phones, quickly learning that we could spot and delete our double-chin moments before anyone saw them.

(Smartphones with cameras officially overtook digital cameras around 2007 but didn't become completely ubiquitous until about 2012-2013.)

The world, and our body image, was never the same.

body image, selfies, photography, photos, body positivity, self esteem, self worth, psychology, technologyResist the urge to zoom in on your most sensitive features. Photo by Antoine Beauvillain on Unsplash

Fraser's post went viral, racking up 30,000 Likes on Instagram and over three million views.

Commenters were so grateful for the message they so desperately needed to hear:

"the fact i saw this picture and ONLY thought about how it was such a beautiful candid & captured your vibe perfectly"

"At first ... I saw nothing wrong with her. But if this was a photo of ME, tell why would I suddenly see all the flaws?"

"At first, I thought we were talking about the tattoos, the accessories, etc. because I saw nothing wrong with her. But if this was a photo of ME, tell why would I suddenly see all the flaws?"

"I'm 41, I still really REALLY struggle with this, I zoom in on every photo and criticise every flaw and a "bad" photo can bring down my body image for days. But I've started refusing to delete and coming back to photos after a day or so and slowly I'm learning to realise they often aren't as "bad" as my initial reaction would suggest."

"I struggled to see what you were talking about but then I imagined if it was me and I could see what might be perceived as issues. Kinda sad."

Fraser's words really struck a nerve, and she managed to capture a feeling and phenomenon that we all intuitively understand but rarely talk about.

When we look at photos of others, we see the big picture. We see their smile and the emotion of the photo, we take in the moment. We don't nitpick. So why do we do it to ourselves?

Body image and pressure to look "perfect" is about as bad, or worse, than its ever been—in part because the online world is so heavily curated. Real people are quieter and harder to find on social media, and instead we see more and more perfect-looking influencers and celebrities. Photos are easy to edit, touch up, or apply filters to. The real, blurry, awkward photos of the early 2000s are gone and probably never coming back.

But we can fight back in one very simple way. Just zoom out. Don't inspect your belly, your smile, or whatever your perceived flaws are. Enjoy the picture for what it is, a snapshot of a moment in time. Try to view it like a stranger would. And, for the love of God, don't be so quick to delete the memories that you can't get back.

From Your Site Articles
body image
Health

Surprising 16-year-long ADHD study proves researchers' hypothesis completely wrong

The findings from first-of-their-kind, long-term ADHD studies keep rolling in and surprising researchers along the way.

Unsplash

Scientists continue to be surprised by the findings of long-term ADHD studies.

Our understanding of ADHD has come a long way in just a few short years. Though it wasn't even formally recognized as a medical condition until the 1960s, by the time the 90s rolled around, diagnoses and stimulant prescriptions were extremely prevalent. (Raise your hand if you grew up in the era of "Anyone who struggles in school gets Ritalin!") Today, diagnoses and treatment are a lot more thoughtful and individualized, and there are more options for treatment and therapy including but not limited to stimulants like the well-known Ritalin. Even with all these advancements, though, we still have more to learn.

A new long-term study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry has proven to be an excellent next step in getting a better understanding of the disorder, showing that a lot of what's commonly believed or assumed about ADHD is incomplete or just flat-out wrong.

Researchers studied 483 participants who were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and continued to assess them for a period of 16 years. The study's authors wanted to get a sense of how ADHD symptoms might change over time.

What the researchers found surprised them. In most participants, symptoms of ADHD fluctuated greatly over the years rather than staying consistent. What surprised them even more were the environmental factors that seemed to play a role in those fluctuations.

adhd, children, kids, mental health, neurodivergent, brains, psychology, medicine, research, medical studiesADHD brains work in mysterious ways, but we're starting to get a clearer picture. Photo by BUDDHI Kumar SHRESTHA on Unsplash

Researchers expected that greater life demands—like more responsibility at work, a heavier workload at school, major life changes, etc.—would exacerbate ADHD symptoms. What they found was the opposite.

It makes sense that a person that struggles with inattention or hyperactivity might have more trouble focusing when they have more "going on" and more distractions to pull them in different directions. It was a huge surprise to the researchers that, actually, people's ADHD symptoms seemed to ease up when life got hectic.

“We expected the relationship between environmental demands and ADHD symptoms to be the opposite of what we found,” study author, professor, and clinical psychologist Margaret H. Sibley explained. “We hypothesized that when life demands and responsibilities increased, this might exacerbate people’s ADHD, making it more severe. In fact, it was the opposite. The higher the demands and responsibilities one was experiencing, the milder their ADHD.”

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

I have a 4-year-old with ADHD and the findings totally track for me based on what I've witnessed in our own life.

We find it's actually easier to be in perpetual motion sometimes—out running errands, doing activities, visiting friends and family—versus staying put too long. When we're just relaxing at home, that's when she tends to start bouncing off the walls! Her ADHD tendencies come out strong in these quiet periods, including what we sometimes playfully refer to as her "hoarding" dozens of coloring sheets or surrounding herself in giant piles of toys, blankets, and stuffed animals; thereby making a huge mess in the house.

Doing nothing or doing very little is not often a restful state for people with ADHD. Typically, people with ADHD experience more background noise than neurotypical brains—so a quiet, seemingly restful environment can sometimes amplify racing thoughts, negative self-talk, and impulsive behavior versus dampening it. You know how kids sometimes act out in school not because they're not smart, but because the material is actually too easy for them and they're bored? Something similar is at play in both of these scenarios.

Of course, as always in science, you have to be careful assuming causation from the findings.

adhd, children, kids, mental health, neurodivergent, brains, psychology, medicine, research, medical studiesThe results show that staying busy may actually help relieve some ADHD symptoms. Annie Spratt/Unsplash

It's important to note that the results of the study don't definitively prove that being busy causes a decrease in ADHD symptoms.

“This might mean that people with ADHD perform their best in more demanding environments (perhaps environments that have stronger immediate consequences, like needing to put food on the table for a family or pay rent monthly). It also might mean that people with ADHD take more on their plate when their symptoms are relatively at bay," Sibley says. Either way, the correlation is certainly strong and worthy of more study.

In the meantime, the study's authors think the results could be viewed in a hopeful light for people just learning to manage their ADHD. “If you’re a doctor talking with a patient who is first getting diagnosed with ADHD, it’s a huge help for that person to hear the message that, ‘You’re going to have good years and not-so-good years, but things can go really well for you if you can get the right factors in place,'” Sibley said. As a parent, I can imagine how reassuring that would have been to hear early on in our own process.

adhd, children, kids, mental health, neurodivergent, brains, psychology, medicine, research, medical studiesWe still have so much to learn. Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

With ADHD diagnoses on the rise, more and more research is being conducted. For example, a recent long-term study out of Sweden was just published linking use of ADHD medication with a reduction in traffic crashes, general injuries, and criminal behavior. That's a strong argument for continuing to hone in on accurate diagnoses and treatment for people who need it, as it clearly benefits society as a whole when done properly!

We're learning more and more about what the factors that affect positive ADHD outcomes are—what might exacerbate symptoms and what types of things can help—and we're starting to get a clearer picture of how people can manage this challenging disorder.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

From Your Site Articles
adhd
Trending Stories