When Almond Butter Is Just Almonds, Does Your Body Get the Same Calories?
Whole almonds yielded less metabolizable energy than pure almond butter in a small feeding trial, with access to fat a plausible explanation.
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Metabolizable Energy
Metabolizable energy measures food energy remaining after digestive and other losses, rather than the total energy released when food is burned.
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Metabolizable energy is the energy from food remaining after accounting for losses in feces, urine and combustible gases, and small losses from the body surface. It describes energy available for metabolism rather than all the energy chemically contained in food .1
A food's gross energy is measured by burning it completely in a bomb calorimeter. The body does not recover all of that energy: some food material is not absorbed, and some absorbed material produces energy-containing waste. Food composition, structure and preparation can affect how much energy is absorbed .1
Metabolizable energy differs from net metabolizable energy, which makes further allowances for heat associated with microbial fermentation and obligatory nutrient processing. Common food-energy calculations based on Atwater factors estimate metabolizable energy rather than gross combustion energy or net metabolizable energy .1
References
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Calculation of the Energy Content of Foods: Energy Conversion Factors. Food energy: methods of analysis and conversion factors. FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 77. 2003. About this source Original source
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