Abstract
The obtainment of suitable values for metabolizable energy requires the previous knowledge of accurate and precise values of the heat of combustion of the different macronutrients. Thus, in this work, the heats of combustion of six carbohydrates (glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, starch, and cellulose) were experimentally measured, and such values were statistically compared with equivalent bibliographic values collected in a parallel work (Heats of combustion of the main carbohydrates in vegetable foods: a bibliographic approach, 2019), proposing, for each carbohydrate, an “overall interval” and an actualized representative value, which were estimated considering jointly the bibliographic and experimental information. Besides, a numerical methodology that used such parameters and the relative content of the different carbohydrates in selected foods was proposed, to estimate the global heat of combustion producible by the carbohydrate mass contained in such foods. The results estimated for 68 foods were globalized to propose the following generalized heats of combustion: (a) for fruits: 3.88 kcal/g, (b) for vegetables: 3.98 kcal/g and, and (c) for cereals: 4.13 kcal/g. These results demonstrated that the use of the Atwater's value (4.2 kcal/g of carbohydrate of vegetable source) involves a clear overestimation of the heat of combustion of the carbohydrate mass contained in vegetable source foods.
Highlights
Negative consequences in public health caused by the overweight and obesity epidemics occurring in several countries are evident
Focusing on the Ac values characterizing the vegetal source foods, Atwater and Bryant (1900) proposed the following values for such coefficient: for cereals: 0.98, for legumes: 0.97, for vegetables: 0.95, and for fruits: 0.90; the deficiencies and information absences related to the obtainment procedure of such factors have been recently summarized (Sánchez‐Peña et al, 2017), implicitly, such factors are still used
Even recognizing certain inaccuracy level on the Ac factors reported by Atwater and Bryant (1900), it could be expectable that such factors are very close to 1.0; the accuracy and precision level of the metabolizable energy of carbohydrates (MEc) value characterizing a given sample must be strongly dependent on the accuracy and precision level of its correspondent HCc value
Summary
Negative consequences in public health caused by the overweight and obesity epidemics occurring in several countries are evident. Regarding carbohydrates, Atwater (1900) proposed that the metabolizable energy of carbohydrates (MEc) can be estimated as follows: MEc = (HCc)Ac, being HCc, the heat of combustion produced by each gram of carbohydrate and, Ac, the availability coefficient of such macronutrient. Focusing on the Ac values characterizing the vegetal source foods, Atwater and Bryant (1900) proposed the following values for such coefficient: for cereals: 0.98, for legumes: 0.97, for vegetables: 0.95, and for fruits: 0.90; the deficiencies and information absences related to the obtainment procedure of such factors have been recently summarized (Sánchez‐Peña et al, 2017), implicitly, such factors are still used. As a first step in the estimation of a suitable MEc value, the establishment of a suitable HCc value is required
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