Google and various websites says 28g of pecans is between 185 and 195 calories, how in the world are praline pecans much less calories?
Google and various websites says 28g of pecans is between 185 and 195 calories, how in the world are praline pecans much less calories?
It’s not an awful lot of calories in difference. Pecans, like all nuts, are highly caloric because they’re high in fat. It just so happens that your praline pecans replace part of the pecans with sugar, which is less caloric than fats. So 28 gr of praline pecans have less cals than 28gr regular pecans.
Reminds me of the “low fat” diet craze. “We replaced all that fat with salt and sugar. Enjoy!”
It’s the same with the lo-carb fad. No more sugars and starches, here’s a wad of salty fat!
A low-carb food isn’t useful on its own because, as you pointed out, the fat/calorie count is usually huge. However, if you can stick to a full ketogenic diet, low-carb actually works for weight loss - ketosis isn’t dependent on a caloric deficit. Yes, most casual-but-dedicated dieters are still going to mess up other things with bad fats and excessive salts like making jerky roll ups in mozzarella dough while forgetting to stuff themselves with vegetables. Your body will take a few days to figure out how it’s supposed to get energy if you’re not supplementing with dietary sugars, but it does eventually. So while yes I roll my eyes at too many requests for low-carb items, I have to appreciate their misunderstanding resulting in my improved food options.
Because that’s how I dropped 40lbs in 6 months without changing anything else in my life and while still having tasty food without guilt. 235>195 5’10 M
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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)
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.