Our warm-blooded bodies
heat up cold food as it's metabolized, and this requires energy.
Frozen foods further require
that you put heat energy into melting, before its temperature
will increase. The calculation for foods with thermal properties
like that of H2O, outlined below and earlier by
Paul
Horowitz, shows that a cup of ice requires nearly 28 food
Calories to bring it up to body temperature (about 98.6 F or 37 C).
As indicated, this is the Calorie equivalent of quite a
few push-ups.
Caution: Consider the source, as this page
was put together by mathematicians and physicists, rather than
by nutritionists or dentists who might know something about
the disadvantages of cold food. Please let us know if there
are things we might or should modify in this regard.
This page is Copyight (2005) by P. Fraundorf, and
hosted by UM-StL Physics
and Astronomy. Average
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