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Pickles: Zero Calories and Other Health Benefits

Pickles: Zero Calories and Other Health Benefits

You may have heard that cucumber pickles, like dill pickles, kosher dills, etc. have zero calories are other health benefits.  Here's the what, why and truth behind it.

Zero calories in pickles?

A calorie is a unit of heat, specifically the amount of heat required to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. 1 calorie is a truly tiny amount of energy, in human terms. When most people talk about these calories, they real mean kcal (kilocalories, 1,000 calories). When you read food labels, they read in kcal. Still with me?

Dill pickles made from cucumbers are pretty much made up of a lot of water, cellulose (fiber), dill seasoning and salt, and sometimes a small amount of garlic.  Obviously, most of these ingredients have few or no calories, since your body can't digest cellulose (you need multiple stomachs and special enzymes, like a cow or other rudiment animals).

It also takes some energy for you to eat and digest pickles.  You have to chew them, move them through your digestive tract, make digestive compounds and excrete them. So, effectively, pickles (those without added sugar) have 0 calories.

This means, If you substitute snacking on popcorn or chips with pickles, over the course of a year, since each ounce serving 3 times per week of of chips or popcorn has about 150 kcal, over the course of a year, you could lose 5 or 6 pounds of fat just from that change alone.

Vinegar and health

The vinegar in pickles, which is water and acetic acid, in considered to help in weight loss, help you feel full quicker (so you eat less) .

Downsides?

Pickles do have a high sodium content. Sodium does cause retention of water and in some people can also increase blood pressure and contribute to heart disease. You CAN find low-sodium pickles or make your own low-sodium pickles!  See this page: Low sodium no sugar dill pickles or low-salt bread and butter pickles

Footnote: How are the calories in food measured?

To measure the calories in food, food scientists put a measured amount of food in a vacuum sealed insulated container (called a bomb calorimeter) and heating it, all the while measuring carefully the amount of heat added and the temperature of the contents. Effectively, they stop when the food is reduced to ash.
So, since they know the amount of heated added, the mass, and the final temperature, they can calculate  the amount of heat (or energy) contributed by the food.