17% Calories and 29% Nutrition!

Great job! You got 17% correct on calories and 29% correct on nutrition! I hope you enjoyed my test. The original version had 50 questions, and I trimmed it down to these 20, after asking my friends for feedback.

Whether or not you're on a diet, it still pays to know basic nutrition and be able to guess calories.  I once tried to diet and was consuming 650 calorie "bran" muffins, thinking they were right for me.  I gained weight. Little did I know, I would've been healthier eating 2 egg McMuffins from McDonald's. Wow.

Anyway, what people seem to want most is an answer key, so here goes.  Message me if you disagree about anything.

1. A banana has around 110 calories, so the answer is 70-125.  If you picked either of the neighboring answers, you still got points. (The same is true for all the calorie questions.)

2. Bananas (bananae?) are a source of potassium.

3. Trans fats are currently deemed "bad" by everyone, and more than trace amounts of them are becoming illegal in a lot of cities' restaurants across the US.

4. Margarine is a big source of trans fats.

5. A glazed donut from Dunkin D's has 230 calories. Fewer than you might expect. They're fried, so I'm not advocating them or anything.

6. Häagen-Dazs' vanilla ice cream has a whopping 1080 calories per pint. I have sat there and plowed through an entire pint while watching Netflix on my couch. Sadly, I didn't even appreciate the pint at the time. Anyway: good food to pack for the apocalypse. Bad for dessert in big quantities.

7. Sugar and protein both have around 4 calories per gram. (Fat has 9.)

8. Water has 0 calories. (Not Vitamin Water, though, the brand. That stuff tastes good, I admit.)

9. If you burn more calories than consume, you'll lose weight. This doesn't include other factors like water retention (too much salt) or breast augmentation surgery, but generally, it's true. If  your goal is to lose weight, simply (1) eat healthy, and (2) make sure you burn more calories than you consume.

10. Running definitely burns more calories than walking, even per unit distance.

11. Sugar does not have bleach it it, although it's reacted with a chemical that acts as a bleaching agent to strip impurities. There's no bleach in there though.

12. There are 100ish calories in a tablespoon of butter.

13. 15 cashews (bless you!) have 180 calories or so.

14. Digestion begins in the mouth. Semantically one could argue it begins in the hand in some cases, but I left that option out so we'd all agree on this one. Your teeth, saliva, and tongue all help prepare food for the path down your throat.

15. The liver is not part of the digestive system. The liver is rad, though.

16. Glucose (C₆H₁₂O₆) is used in cellular respiration. Your body converts fat, protein, and sugars all into this one simple carbohydrate for burning.

17. Despite popular myth, Diet Coke hydrates you. Shocking, right?  If you were stuck on a desert island with a bunch of dry foods and diet coke, you would not get all dehydrated and die. It isn't nearly as effective as water, but it hydrates, overall.

18. There are 30 milligrams of sodium in a large potato. 30 grams would be 1,000 times the normal amount.  This question wasn't designed to test your knowledge of the metric system, just your familiarity with nutrition labels. If you read them often, you know that sodium is typically measured (and consumed) in mg.

19. Alcohol provides calories. 7 calories per gram.

20. A pregnant woman should start by adding around 100 calories per day to her diet and then up that to about 300. Different doctors suggest different amounts, but no one suggests 1,000 extra calories per day.

Thanks for taking my test! Don't forget to rate it and challenge your friends!