What is the calorific content of poo?

Question

You know - there is all this information about how many calories you put in, but not much about what comes out.
I know it can change depending on what you eat, what medication/s you are on and how much water you drink, but seriously - how much of what goes in comes out??

Answer 1

It depends on your body needs. Each person is different.

Answer 2

While what you eat will effect the calorific value of your pooh you need to understand calories.

When on a packet of food it lists the calories available in the food, it does not equate to the amount of calories the body can actually extract from that food. These tests are done in a laboratory where the scientist in effect "burns" the food stuff to se how mush heat is given off. This then is used to work out the calorific value of the product.

BUT............ You only have to see what is left the following day after you have eaten sweetcorn to know it is mainly undigested, therefore it's calorific content has gone straight thorough :-)

The body uses food in different ways, to build new tissues, keep the body warm etc. It also will save food in the form of FAT, no different form the lard you can buy in supermarkets. The body is very good at retaining nutrients, only the stuff it has trouble with gets poohed out.

Dung is used in many countries as a source of energy to cook food, so it must be quite good.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

One large or kCal is the energy of a material needed to raise the temperature of 1litre of water by 1 degree C when burnt. [1]

Dried cow dung is widely used as a cooking fuel in India, where it dries as hard as cement, so it certainly has some significant calorific value. [2,3]
The calorific value may be more related to the generation of hydrogen and methane, a product of the action of bacteria on food. However its calorific value has been determined [4]:
Approx heating value Kcal/Kg:
> Natural state 1000
> Dried 3700

Dried dung is comparable to food and coal
Coal at 4000-7000

Natural Dung at 1000 is significantly less calorific than high calorie food [5] and similar to that of vegetable matter - similar material the cows eat:
Butter 7700
Bread 2280
Cod (fried) 1400
Cucumber 100
Peas 490

The problem with this analysis in terms of energy value per kg, is that foods that are eaten can have most of their weight and volume composed on water. The process of digestion removes most of the water where it is excreted by perspiration or urination. Also high calorific foods that humans eat will lead to more calorific absorption per unit weight that the low calorific food eaten by cows such as grass. So it really depends on what you eat.

A truely scietific study of this needs to include consider all teh enegy inputs and outputs and energy expended by the person or animal. I would have to point you to scientific articles I do not access to that: [6,7[

Answer 4

Calories are the "energetic value" of food. So once you eat smth calories are being used to either produce energy or fat (stores of energy).
I dont think that some calories get out. If it would be so why would people care so much how many calories go in?
However you lose from 19 to 70 calories when you dump.

Answer 5

A calorie is a measure of heat, calorific value of anything is the amount of heat it will produce when combusted, we combust carbohydrate at cell level so, the higher the calorie level of food the hotter it will burn (we are like internal combustion engines, we use fuel [food] mix it with oxygen [like in a carburetor] and breath out waste gas [CO2].

Take your piece of poo, dry it out, and burn it. If it burns hot, lots of calories, if it doesn't, less calories. Have fun.

Answer 6

Not sure about that one. But I did call Crest one time to see what the calorie content in their toothpaste was, and they had no data. They probably thought I was a freak for asking, but I truly wanted to know!

Answer 7

There must be some food value. Think of all the bugs that live on dung, but just because there is food value doesn't mean I'm going to start eating it.

Answer 8

Dont know about the calorific value but the marketing possibilities are endless-
Low fat poo,
i can't belive its not poo,
Free range poo
15 year malt poo
buy one poo get one poo free

Answer 9

i think you should only worry about the calories you are putting in, and not the ones you are pooing out,
good question though and i must admit that it does make you think.

Answer 10

whatever your body cannot digest or absorb leaves the body as waste. And this can be as high as 70/80 %