Food Nutrition and Facts

Question
When cooking or baking foods, if the foods become burnt or charred when being prepared, do they contain less calories?  For example, if I am cooking green beans in an oven and they become highly blackened by the broiler, would the blackened green beans contain fewer calories because the calories are "burnt off" during the heat transfer.  I am somewhat basing this assumption on the idea that energy cannot be lost or created but only transfered so as the food burns the calorie energy transfers to heat energy.  Thank you.

Answer
Hello Zachary!

   Thank you for your nutrition question.  The calorie is a unit of energy so when you burn food it means the calorie is being used up.  For example, while we don't exactly light food on fire in our stomachs, the process of digesting food is the same as if it were actually burned.  Food is broken down, using enzymes and oxygen, releasing energy, carbon dioxide and water just as if it were burned, only slower. Hope this helps.

-George

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