Tuesday, May 15, 2007

There is a reason this is called "I Believe in COFFE" and not "I Believe in Energy Drinks"

And that's because I DON'T believe in energy drinks because they fuck you up goooooooooooood. They mess with your BRAIN. And stuff. And it's kind of like existing off ina very far away bubble while time flows in beautiful, yet shaky colors in front of you.

Those of you who've guessed that I may be under the influence of one of these certain vile liquids, you win the right to feel important for two seconds. Not three. jUst two.

But seriously? THE COLORS. I CAN SEE THROUGH THE COSMOS. CHANNELING BILLY PILGRIM HERE, PEOPLE. Also, I think I'm going to puke.

So. Enviga. NOT A GOOD IDEA. First, there's the whole fact that they actually taste good. Seems like a positive right? WRONG. Most energy drinks taste kind of like dishwater fluid after you used it to hose down a skunk who slept on a bed of acidic nuclear waste. This forces you to slow your consumption and prevents you from OVERLOADING YOUR SYSTEM IN FORTY-FIVE SECONDS OF ANDVANCED GULPING BEFORE LECTURE STARTS.

Anyway. The tasting good leads to the overloading which leads to the "I have small, uncomfortable insects in my pants or am having a petit mal seizure" effect, which is...awkward, shall we say. BUT shaking BURNS CALORIES.

And then we come to the really egregious part of this beverage. It claims to have NEGATIVE CALORIES.

Really.

No, I've never heard of the, oh SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS OR ANYTHING. Sheesh.

Ok, my brain is obviously fuzzy, but here's the short version:

Calories are related to the bond energy between the atoms and monomers that make up your food. Protein and sugars have the same number of bonds per molecular weight. One gram protein/sugar = 4 calories. (Which are actually kilocalories, but i'm not going there. Google loves you.)

Fats have lots and LOTS of bonds. Saturated fats have even more bonds. Trans fats have kinda funky bonds, again, worship the Google. But basically bonds = ENERGY.

But Caffeinegirl, you're saying to yourselves. Isn't everything made up of atoms? With energy in their chemical bonds? So why isn't everything food

Ah, I say, this is where the thinking splits. In the scientific world, it is generally accepted that humans evolved to process certain kinds of organic matter. We have enzymes and metabolic processes that can deal with carbohydrates. Cellulose? Not so much. Don't eat grass, or you'll starve to death. Though both are made of of glucosaccharides, the structure on the molecular level is different. (We take advantage of different sugar structures to make zero-calorie artificial sweeteners, btw). It was evolutionarily advantageous for us to be able to process certain kinds of matter, i.e., food.

Now, if you live in Kansas, please ignore everything I just said. Obviously, an intelligent designer said LET THERE BE PEOPLE and there were people. Then he said LET THERE BE LOTS OF TASTY FOOD, especially these things called apples because I'm planning to screw with these humans later. Right.

So, in summary:
1. All matter has chemical bonds
2. The human digestive can break down SOME kinds of matter and harness the chemical bond energy.
3. Kansas is kind of fucked-up.

Therefore: Stuff you put in your mouth has potential energy. If its of the kind compatible with the human digestive system, it has positive calories. If it is of the less compatible, more ornery kind--zero calories. Essentially, nothing can have negative calories. Unless--hmm, my physics knowledge is still JUST A TAD shaky, BUT, if you had some kind of wacko matter that went around destroying bonds in OTHER, already consumed matter, you woudl have negative calories. YOu know what matter breaking bonds of other matter sounds like? IT SOUNDS LIKE NUCLEAR WASTE, PEOPLE. So, eat a nice missle for lunch and let me know how it goes.

Anyway, the logic that Coke is attempting to use to market this stuff has to do with not nuclear waste but with rate of metablism. The rate at which you BURN calroies taht you have already taken in can be affected by any number of factors, including but not limited to: age, overall endocrinology, type of food consumed, amount of sleep, level of activity, number of tiny microscopic gnomes living in your cells, and how many socks you lost in the laundry last Thrusday.

In this case, it has been shown that grean tea = boosted metabolsim. How much? YOUR MILAGE MAY VARY. It is seriously impossible to pin down every factor that could possibly affect your metabolism and how much it will do so in an individual. EVERYTHING you consume affecs your rate of metabolsim in some way! But we don't know how. That's why the convention is just to label how much energy is in the food, and we leave it up to the consumer to determine how much energy they need. Which we apaprently aren't very good at but hey, McNUGGETS!

Basically, we COULD get into how much each food affects your metablism, but it would bmean that a bag of potato chips would have to come with the nutrition facts not printed convenitently on the bag, but with a supplementary encyclopedia-length document. Which, frankly, woud suck.

And this is why Enviga is stuipd. I seem to remmebr that it was REALLY IMIPROTANT for me to establish this point when I started writing this, but now...I think the Enviga's wearing off. Oh well. I'll be fine.

Plus, I know that in my room, there's 2 doubleshots int he fridge.

Note: I didn't post this at the time of writing. Upon reviewing it, however, I decided that the typos/generall nonsense was funny. Or I was too lazy to spellcheck. Your call.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm totally with you right now and I'M A BAD PERSON!!!

Anonymous said...

ps you spelled "coffee" wrong in the title...i spend way too much time on your blog *shame* :(