Does drinking ice water burn calories?

When you drink cold water, your body exerts an effort to warm up the liquid and, in doing so, burns calories. So does that make drinking ice water an effective weight loss strategy? Find out in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

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(00:28):
today's question. Does drinking ice water burn calories? For anyone
who's trying to lose weight? This question is an exciting one.
If you simply want to know if your body burns
calories warming up the water, the answer is yes. But
if you want to know if drinking a lot of
ice water can help you lose weight or keep weight off,

(00:50):
this yes needs to be qualified with some calculations. Here's
the definition of a calorie. It takes one calorie to
raise the temperature of one liter of water one degree celsius. So,
considering that the definition of a calorie is based on
raising the temperature of water, it's safe to say that

(01:10):
your body burns calories when it has to raise the
temperature of ice water to your body temperature. So calories
are being burned. Let's figure out exactly what you're burning.
When you drink a sixteen ounce or point five liter
glass of ice water, the temperature of the ice water
can be estimated to be zero degrees celsius. Body temperature

(01:32):
can be estimated at thirty seven degrees celsius. So in
the case of a half lead glass of ice water,
your body must raise the temperature of the half liter
of water from zero to thirty seven degrees celsius. In
doing so, your body burns seventeen and a half calories.
In the grand scheme of a two thousand calorie diet,

(01:53):
that's seventeen and a half calories isn't very significant. But
let's say you adhere to the old eight eight ounce
glasses of water a day idea. To warm up all
that water in the course of a day, your body
burns about seventy calories, and over time that seventy calories
a day can add up. You can increase the effect
by chewing on ice. It takes eighty calories to melt

(02:17):
a liter of ice, so if you freeze half of
your daily water intake and eat that ice, you'll burn
an extra eighty calories for more on this and thousands
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