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As someone who has been counting calories and trying to minimize caloric and fat intake for several months I have to ask this question.

Why is it that drinks but not food can have 0 calories?

Hack-R
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    You can eat ice. And you could even argue it has negative calories because it's cold and it will be warmed up by your body! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-calorie_food – Eilon Dec 28 '16 at 20:13

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Drinks are mostly water. If besides that it's just flavorings and artificial sweeteners, there's nothing with calories in it. So zero-calorie drinks are a really obvious thing to make: just take some existing drink, replace any sugar with artificial sweeteners, replace any actual food content (e.g. fruit puree) with flavorings, and it'll be zero calorie.

To make zero-calorie food, you'd need a solid edible zero-calorie thing to provide the bulk, and there's not an obvious choice for that, certainly not something common like water. On top of that, if you want it to be anything like the food it's based on, it has to be a very specific substance.

That said, it's not impossible. There are indigestible carbohydrates (fiber, generally), and some foods like shirataki noodles made basically completely out of that so they end up low- or zero-calorie.

I'm sure with enough modern industrial food science, we could make a lot more things in that vein. But it's definitely not nearly so easy as with drinks. And you wouldn't want to eat massive quantities; the water that makes up virtually all of a zero-calorie drink is easy to get out of your body, but giant amounts of indigestible solids won't be as pleasant.

Cascabel
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    Zero calorie solid bulk still has to be eliminated, which, if consumed in quantity could be uncomfortable. Zero calorie sweeteners merely have to be broken down by one or another organ into soluble substances that usually can be more comfortably eliminated. So it might be harder to commercialize zero calorie food versus zero calorie beverages. – Todd Wilcox Dec 16 '16 at 02:09
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    @ToddWilcox Edited. I think the better comparison is the *water* in the zero-calorie drinks, though, since there's orders of magnitude more of it. – Cascabel Dec 16 '16 at 02:13
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    Good point. It's also interesting that many people drink coffee or tea black with no sugar and are drinking essentially zero calorie beverages with no substitutions made, which isn't really possible with solid food as far as I know. Well I suppose you could eat play dough or glue... I wonder if those have calories. What about swallowing a piece of sugar free gum? – Todd Wilcox Dec 16 '16 at 02:17
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    I hear lots of jokes about celery being negative calories because it takes your body more energy to digest it than it contains. I'm not sure if that's true, though. – Catija Dec 16 '16 at 02:40
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    @ToddWilcox play dough and glue both likely have calories. Just because it's not food doesn't make it non-caloric. Calorie content is based on grams of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. – Catija Dec 16 '16 at 02:43
  • Yeah, there are certainly vegetables that might as well be zero calories. You'd apparently have to eat ten stalks of celery (10-12 inches long) to get 100 calories. I doubt it takes 100 calories to digest that, but it's sure not much. – Cascabel Dec 16 '16 at 02:46
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    You also have things which are marked as zero calories (e.g. tic tacs) because they have less than x calories and the FDA or similar regulatory agency likely allows it. As for celery being a "negative calorie food", its [bunk](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21723312). – Batman Dec 16 '16 at 06:21
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    Remember the Olestra debacle - and since we are indulging in a health discussion anyway, something that tells your brain it is high caloric food and isn't might be anything but healthy. – rackandboneman Dec 16 '16 at 10:01
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    ...and who deleted that amazon link... the reviews there are hilarious... "I think the recipe is a combination of shaving cream and two peanuts blended in a food processor. and food coloring." – rackandboneman Dec 16 '16 at 10:04
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    @Catiia: heard that too but Wikipedia claims that tjis is nonsense: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-calorie_food – eckes Dec 17 '16 at 19:44
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    Regarding 0 calorie drinks, sweeteners are essentially indigestible sugars, and as such they can cause havoc in your guts if you ingest too much of them. Some brands of sugar free gums or candies even have a warning about this on the package (see also the diet gummy bears "prank") – Agos Dec 22 '16 at 08:48
  • It's a matter of language: if it's not nutrious, it's not [food](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food). There are known choices for such bulk substances, e.g. cellulose, [sawdust or straw](https://books.google.de/books?id=lNCUBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA452&ots=Dw_2mxgfPh&dq=s%C3%A4gesp%C3%A4ne%20n%C3%A4hrwert%20krieg&hl=de&pg=PA452#v=onepage&q&f=false). They are just not called food. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Aug 13 '19 at 12:48
  • @cbeleitessupportsMonica No, whether you call it "food" merely depends on whether you intend it to be eaten as part of a person's regular diet. As bulk items in their raw form, you might not call them food, but a hypothetical fake burger made from cellulose and flavourings certainly would be called food. – Graham Jan 06 '20 at 11:51