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> most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. That's super misleading. The nutrition facts for broccoli here [1] gives 89% water but actually over 1/3rd

by tgb 5y ago

> most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. That's super misleading. The nutrition facts for broccoli here [1] gives 89% water but actually over 1/3rd of broccoli by mass is carbs, fats, proteins or fibers. And comparing raw broccoli to cooked chicken is deceptive - cooking broccoli obviously gets rid of a lot of it's water depending on how you cook. Moreover, comparing gram-to-gram, I'm sure broccoli is less filling, but a lot of people care more about calorie-to-calorie. [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/broccoli#nutrients https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/broccoli#nutrient...

pembrook 5y ago
Raw chicken with skin on is 66% water, so I wouldn't call it super misleading. I simply mentioned "cooked" because almost nobody eats chicken raw. Lots of people eat raw broccoli. Boiling or steaming broccoli does basically nothing to its water content. Baking it may reduce by 10%. So still 20% more water than the protein. Anyways, the water point was brought up to give something intuitive to grasp on to. As said, the main reason eating one chicken breast makes you feel more full than multiple servings of broccoli, is the 55g of protein. So adding broccoli to your fast food won't suddenly make you feel full. Dumping the fast food altogether and eating a chicken breast instead might.
- tgb 5y ago
  I was saying that "90% water" stat is super misleading because it makes it sound like <10% is anything of value, but that's off by a factor of 3. Baking absolutely makes a bigger than 10% water loss by mass in broccoli, and that would of course double the non-water fraction even if it were only 10%. But the point is, it doesn't matter how much water there is. No one is wondering whether they'll feel more full on 100g of chicken or 100g of broccoli. Anyone trying to control weight would ask about 100 calories of broccoli versus 100g of chicken. I don't know what the answer there is, but they're probably comparable. A head of broccoli is just 205 calories but still contains 17g protein and 16g of fiber. Equivalent calorie chicken breast would be like 40g protein and no fiber. Both are healthy food choices unless you deep fry them or something. You're making lots of fast-and-loose comparisons here that are simply misleading. (Why is the comparison broccoli + fast food versus just chicken? Why do you suddenly switch to talking about iceberg lettuce? Why pretend that broccoli isn't a healthy food that is substantially more satiating than fast food - as is chicken?)

by tgb 5y ago

pembrook 5y ago

Raw chicken with skin on is 66% water, so I wouldn't call it super misleading. I simply mentioned "cooked" because almost nobody eats chicken raw. Lots of people eat raw broccoli. Boiling or steaming broccoli does basically nothing to its water content. Baking it may reduce by 10%. So still 20% more water than the protein. Anyways, the water point was brought up to give something intuitive to grasp on to. As said, the main reason eating one chicken breast makes you feel more full than multiple servings of broccoli, is the 55g of protein. So adding broccoli to your fast food won't suddenly make you feel full. Dumping the fast food altogether and eating a chicken breast instead might.

tgb 5y ago
I was saying that "90% water" stat is super misleading because it makes it sound like <10% is anything of value, but that's off by a factor of 3. Baking absolutely makes a bigger than 10% water loss by mass in broccoli, and that would of course double the non-water fraction even if it were only 10%. But the point is, it doesn't matter how much water there is. No one is wondering whether they'll feel more full on 100g of chicken or 100g of broccoli. Anyone trying to control weight would ask about 100 calories of broccoli versus 100g of chicken. I don't know what the answer there is, but they're probably comparable. A head of broccoli is just 205 calories but still contains 17g protein and 16g of fiber. Equivalent calorie chicken breast would be like 40g protein and no fiber. Both are healthy food choices unless you deep fry them or something. You're making lots of fast-and-loose comparisons here that are simply misleading. (Why is the comparison broccoli + fast food versus just chicken? Why do you suddenly switch to talking about iceberg lettuce? Why pretend that broccoli isn't a healthy food that is substantially more satiating than fast food - as is chicken?)