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Caloric content of I Can't Believe it's Not Butter spray
12 years ago
General
Because of stupidness, I Can't Believe it's Not Butter spray can be labelled as calorie-free, despite being an 8-oz bottle composed primarily of oil. HOWEVER. There's still a way to figure out the reasonable maximum amount of calories in there.
We know of everything listed on the back, soybean oil is going to be the most calorically dense (pure fat is generally said to be about 9 calories per gram, most sources I'm finding say 8.84c/g for soybean oil). Ingredients are listed in order of most to least. There are 12 ingredients listed, which theoretically means each ingredient could be a 12-way even split, but that's pretty unlikely. The first ingredient is water, the second, soybean oil.
However, the third ingredient is salt. Water and soybean oil are both sodium-free. From the nutrition facts, we know that five sprays is 1% daily value (which would be 20mg) of sodium. Let's assume the maximum that could be called 1% would be slightly less than 1.5% (or else they'd have to round up to 2%), so 29.9mg. Divide by five (number of sprays), multiply by 1,130 (the number of servings in a bottle), and you have a maximum amount of sodium of about 6700mg. Salt, being a mix of sodium and chloride, is about 338mg of sodium per gram, which means that the third ingredient, salt, is a maximum of 17g. The entire bottle, we know, is 226g (says so on the front), and eight fluid ounces. Technically the other ingredients could all be 17 grams too, which would give us a hefty portion of the bottle, but after "sweet cream buttermilk" we start getting into what are typically trace ingredients, like lethicin and polysorbate. So salt is at most 17g, sweet cream buttermilk might be near that, but we can assume the rest are probably negligible.
So if we subtract salt from the maximum capacity and assume that the other ingredients are negligible, we know that since water is the first ingredient, the remaining amount is, at most, half soybean oil. Let's also assume sweet cream buttermilk is 17g, since it's a non-trace ingredient. 226 - (17 + 17) = 192 / 2 = 96g of soybean oil. Let's assume sweet cream buttermilk is as calorically dense as soybean oil (it must be close) and just call it 113g of oil. At 8.84 calories per gram (call it 9 if you want, it won't make much difference after the following steps) that means the bottle contains a maximum (rounded up) of 999 calories (18 more if you said 9c/g). Dividing by 1,130, the amount of sprays in a bottle, gives you 0.884 (0.9 for 9c/g) calories per spray. The other ingredients are not calorie free, so we can assume a tiny bit extra amongst all the others, and may as well round up.
TL;DR - 1 CALORIE PER SPRAY
YOU'RE WELCOME
We know of everything listed on the back, soybean oil is going to be the most calorically dense (pure fat is generally said to be about 9 calories per gram, most sources I'm finding say 8.84c/g for soybean oil). Ingredients are listed in order of most to least. There are 12 ingredients listed, which theoretically means each ingredient could be a 12-way even split, but that's pretty unlikely. The first ingredient is water, the second, soybean oil.
However, the third ingredient is salt. Water and soybean oil are both sodium-free. From the nutrition facts, we know that five sprays is 1% daily value (which would be 20mg) of sodium. Let's assume the maximum that could be called 1% would be slightly less than 1.5% (or else they'd have to round up to 2%), so 29.9mg. Divide by five (number of sprays), multiply by 1,130 (the number of servings in a bottle), and you have a maximum amount of sodium of about 6700mg. Salt, being a mix of sodium and chloride, is about 338mg of sodium per gram, which means that the third ingredient, salt, is a maximum of 17g. The entire bottle, we know, is 226g (says so on the front), and eight fluid ounces. Technically the other ingredients could all be 17 grams too, which would give us a hefty portion of the bottle, but after "sweet cream buttermilk" we start getting into what are typically trace ingredients, like lethicin and polysorbate. So salt is at most 17g, sweet cream buttermilk might be near that, but we can assume the rest are probably negligible.
So if we subtract salt from the maximum capacity and assume that the other ingredients are negligible, we know that since water is the first ingredient, the remaining amount is, at most, half soybean oil. Let's also assume sweet cream buttermilk is 17g, since it's a non-trace ingredient. 226 - (17 + 17) = 192 / 2 = 96g of soybean oil. Let's assume sweet cream buttermilk is as calorically dense as soybean oil (it must be close) and just call it 113g of oil. At 8.84 calories per gram (call it 9 if you want, it won't make much difference after the following steps) that means the bottle contains a maximum (rounded up) of 999 calories (18 more if you said 9c/g). Dividing by 1,130, the amount of sprays in a bottle, gives you 0.884 (0.9 for 9c/g) calories per spray. The other ingredients are not calorie free, so we can assume a tiny bit extra amongst all the others, and may as well round up.
TL;DR - 1 CALORIE PER SPRAY
YOU'RE WELCOME
Nice work :o