# Carb Absorption from Marinades



## Andy M.

SO is attempting the Atkins again so I have to re-acquaint myself with the rules.  Rummaging through the book tells me a lot but I haven't found the answer to the following question.

If you use a high carb food item in a marinade, how much of its carbs do you count in the finished product.

For example, Hoot's grilled shrimp calls for a marinade which includes a cup of beer.  It would seem to me that 99% of the beer and its resident carbs remains in the dish when you take the shrimp out of the marinade to grill them.  

Does anyone know any different?  Is there some magical carb absorption formula that involves the hypotenuse of the shrimp times the square root of the cosine of the beer bottle, or something?


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## Steve Kroll

Well...

How about this? Measure the marinade before and after adding the food. Take the difference and divide it among the number of servings in the recipe.

I don't know if it would work, but you have to admit it sounds logical.


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## Andy M.

Steve Kroll said:


> Well...
> 
> How about this? Measure the marinade before and after adding the food. Take the difference and divide it among the number of servings in the recipe.
> 
> I don't know if it would work, but you have to admit it sounds logical.



That would be relatively easy if beer was the only liquid ingredient, but there is also oil and vinegar.  What if they get absorbed at different rates?  How much drips off on the grill? ...or gets burned off during cooking?


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## no mayonnaise

I don't think it'll absorb any carbs.  To my knowledge, carbs don't filter in/out of cells via osmosis, and they don't otherwise bond to foods.
If it absorbs any carbs, it'll be such an insignificant amount that I can't imagine it even impacting someone on Atkins.  You may get some excess marinade (and thus, carbs) that sticks to the food, but I'd guess most would drip off during cooking anyway, resulting in insignificant amounts.  I doubt you'd get even an entire sip's worth of beer out of the entire meal.  My guess is the beer's role is to function as an acid, similar to lemon or lime juice.


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## Andy M.

no mayonnaise said:


> I don't think it'll absorb any carbs.  To my knowledge, carbs don't filter in/out of cells via osmosis, and they don't otherwise bond to foods.
> If it absorbs any carbs, it'll be such an insignificant amount that I can't imagine it even impacting someone on Atkins.  You may get some excess marinade (and thus, carbs) that sticks to the food, but I'd guess most would drip off during cooking anyway, resulting in insignificant amounts.  I doubt you'd get more an entire sip's worth of beer out of the entire meal.  My guess is the beer's role is to function as an acid, similar to lemon or lime juice.




That's my opinion as well.  I was hoping someone with more knowledge than I could provide confirmation.  Thanks.


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## PrincessFiona60

Simple carb, often added to marinades...sugar in some form.  How much sweet do you taste when you eat the finished product?  

Take 2 raw potato sticks.  Put one in cold salt water, put the other in cold sugar water, use the same volumes of water and salt/sugar.  After 15 minutes take them out...the salt water potato is still crisp, if not crisper than it was.  The sugar water potato is almost limp...the sugar pulls water out of the potato.


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## Chef Munky

Andy M. said:


> SO is attempting the Atkins again so I have to re-acquaint myself with the rules.  Rummaging through the book tells me a lot but I haven't found the answer to the following question.
> 
> If you use a high carb food item in a marinade, how much of its carbs do you count in the finished product.
> 
> For example, Hoot's grilled shrimp calls for a marinade which includes a cup of beer.  It would seem to me that 99% of the beer and its resident carbs remains in the dish when you take the shrimp out of the marinade to grill them.
> 
> Does anyone know any different?  Is there some magical carb absorption formula that involves the hypotenuse of the shrimp times the square root of the cosine of the beer bottle, or something?



Andy,

My better half is on the Atkins diet again to. Does your SO have that little pocket booklet? Or any of the Atkins books, that's including the cookbook?

I'm thinking the carbs will be grilled off the shrimp enough that it wouldn't even matter. It's not like your using a whole gallon of the stuff. On the other hand the diet says no carbs. Doesn't beer have carbs, it's made from yeast isn't it? Look who doesn't drink beer. <-----

I would think to count the carbs for a dish, count them in as the total amount of each serving. That diet has me punching #'s to. Sorry I'm not that much help to you. Seems to me that whatever I might suggest as a veggie that's healthy with no carbs actually does have them. It's making it hard to figure out what's ok, what's not. Some days I don't even want to cook. They can't have anything. Kind of takes away the joy of cooking.

Munky.


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## Andy M.

Chef Munky said:


> ...It's making it hard to figure out what's ok, what's not. Some days I don't even want to cook. They can't have anything. Kind of takes away the joy of cooking.
> 
> Munky.



You've got that right!


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## acerbicacid

PrincessFiona60 said:


> Simple carb, often added to marinades...sugar in some form.  How much sweet do you taste when you eat the finished product?
> 
> Take 2 raw potato sticks.  Put one in cold salt water, put the other in cold sugar water, use the same volumes of water and salt/sugar.  After 15 minutes take them out...the salt water potato is still crisp, if not crisper than it was.  The sugar water potato is almost limp...the sugar pulls water out of the potato.



Good morning PrincessFiona, I don't quite understand that about the sugar and salt,  if you want to degorge/remove the moisture from things like cucumber, egg plant and vegetables for pickling, you sprinkle them with salt.    Is it because the water becomes a brine that the process doesn't work?

Brilliant the things you learn on here


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## PrincessFiona60

acerbicacid said:


> Good morning PrincessFiona, I don't quite understand that about the sugar and salt,  if you want to degorge/remove the moisture from things like cucumber, egg plant and vegetables for pickling, you sprinkle them with salt.    Is it because the water becomes a brine that the process doesn't work?
> 
> Brilliant the things you learn on here



Sugar is hygroscopic, it absorbs water, but does not try to give any of that water back.  Salt on the other hand will take the water with it, in and out until it reaches a concentration of salt that is the same in the water and in the potato.

So putting the potato in sugar water (or any sweet marinade) the sugary (carb laden) is more likely to just coat the surface of the potato/food as it pulls moisture out of the food.  

Using a salty marinade, the salt helps in pulling the marinade into the food.

In purging cucumbers for pickles and eggplant, you put salt straight onto the food, the salt works to draw the water out to balance the concentration of salt on the inside and outside.  

I hope some of this makes sense.


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## acerbicacid

Thank you, it makes perfect sense, I thought it might be something like that.    As I said it is brilliant the things you can learn on here.


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## PrincessFiona60

acerbicacid said:


> Thank you, it makes perfect sense, I thought it might be something like that.    As I said it is brilliant the things you can learn on here.



I remember the potato trick from when I was in eighth grade chemistry class...


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## Hoot

The Atkins diet scares me, as does most of these type of diets. I know a number of people who have tried it. Wasn't long before ALL of them were positively ashen...I mean gray!! They looked like death walking. For good or ill, I believe that the best "diet" is a balanced one in which proper nutrition is provided, and portions are managed with as much zeal as the carbs are managed in the Atkins diet. Just my 2 cents worth.


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## CWS4322

Hoot said:


> The Atkins diet scares me, as does most of these type of diets. I know a number of people who have tried it. Wasn't long before ALL of them were positively ashen...I mean gray!! They looked like death walking. For good or ill, I believe that the best "diet" is a balanced one in which proper nutrition is provided, and portions are managed with as much zeal as the carbs are managed in the Atkins diet. Just my 2 cents worth.


+1


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## Andy M.

Hoot said:


> The Atkins diet scares me, as does most of these type of diets. I know a number of people who have tried it. Wasn't long before ALL of them were positively ashen...I mean gray!! They looked like death walking. For good or ill, I believe that the best "diet" is a balanced one in which proper nutrition is provided, and portions are managed with as much zeal as the carbs are managed in the Atkins diet. Just my 2 cents worth.




I agree.  I prefer just eating a balanced diet in smaller quantities when I diet.  Besides, there are too many delicious carbs out there I'm not willing to forgo.

However, SO believes she will be more successful doing Atkins.  She never does it for long so I just have to cooperate for a while then she loses a few pounds and quits.


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## CWS4322

Andy M. said:


> I agree.  I prefer just eating a balanced diet in smaller quantities when I diet.  Besides, there are too many delicious carbs out there I'm not willing to forgo.
> 
> However, SO believes she will be more successful doing Atkins.  She never does it for long so I just have to cooperate for a while then she loses a few pounds and quits.


I thought the diet included life-long modifications re: how one 

eats.Atkins diet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So if one adheres to it, one shouldn't have to go back on it--maybe I've misunderstood.


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## Andy M.

CWS4322 said:


> ...So if one adheres to it...




This is the key.


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## CWS4322

Yeah--but it sounds as if your SO is not adhering to it? No offense intended.


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## Andy M.

CWS4322 said:


> Yeah--but it sounds as if your SO is not adhering to it? No offense intended.




No offense.  That's exactly what happens.  She'll do it for a while.  But because she's impatient she wants immediate results.


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## CWS4322

Andy M. said:


> But because she's impatient she wants immediate results.


Not gonna happen.


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## sparrowgrass

A diet that includes absolutely no carbs is boring and probably not good for your health.  A low carb diet--one that includes plenty of fresh veggies, some fruit, very few grains or starchy vegetables, and no sugar, is easy, healthy, and with a good imaginative cook, can be delicious.  

That is what I have been doing for the last 2 years--I am down almost 70 pounds, feel great, and all those numbers that the doc has been yelling about are at normal levels.

I know that this is not a 'diet'--if I go back to eating too many carbs, I WILL develop complications from diabetes--this is just the way I eat now.

I try to keep my carbs below 30 grams per meal, with a few left over for an ocasional treat.


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## sparrowgrass

Oh, back to the marinade question--as long as it doesn't have sugar in it, I wouldn't even think about it.  There are low-carb beers--unfortunately, those are also the low flavor beers.


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## Andy M.

Regular beer (the kind I keep in the house) is high in carbs.  In the initial stages of the diet she has to limit herself to some super low amount of carbs to get on the right track then can up the amount of carbs for the next phase.


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## taxlady

I followed the Atkins diet for about two years. Stirling did too. I lost about 50 lbs that I needed to lose. We both felt and looked healthy.

We got kinda tired of low carb and went back to eating pasta and rice and bread, etc.

Before we started the Atkins diet we had had our cholesterol, etc. tested. We were both in the normal range. After about a year, we had those numbers checked again and they were even better!

I think it is good to consider your ancestry when deciding on a diet. Back on 2007-03-30 a friend of mine posted the following on LiveJournal. Stirling and I are the 'friends of Nordic extraction'.

"There was recently a discussion on my friends list (in the context of  politically motivated pet abuse, I believe) about the metabolic  advisedness of the low-carbohydrate diet kept by certain good friends of  mine (They say: works great! Others say: you nuts!). I thought it  should not go without note that both of these individuals are of, in  large part, nordic extraction. By this time of year, many of their  ancestors were probably reduced to eating fish heads and seal willies,  because science shows that you can't make toast out of snow. And the  relevance of this is that, while your ancestors may be dead _now,_ they (generally speaking) _weren't_  dead at the time time that they were, if I may be somewhat indelicate,  ‘procreating.’ ...

"So  perhaps if you and yours come from nice warm climes where olives grow  on trees and clothing is optional, a low-carbohydrate diet makes about  as much sense as giving up wine. But for those for whom fermenting _honey_ was actually more convenient than fermenting grapes (what, after all, are a few bee strings when you don't _have_ any grapes...) the situation, by which I mean the inherited metabolic situation, may be a little different.

"Of  course, I may be entirely wrong, since I know essentially nothing of  either human metabolic chemistry or indeed paleoclimatography"


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## Andy M.

Thanks for all the diet stories.

Anyone have any more input on the original question?


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## no mayonnaise

Complex carbs are just too large of a molecule to penetrate the cellular membrane through osmosis, so the only carbs are going to be what's left on the outside of the marinated food.  It's really just that simple.


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## Andy M.

Thanks, I'm convinced.


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## CWS4322

TL has met me--I'm not fat, I'm not thin. I think I'm "normal" for my height. TL can correct that. I rarely eat carbs. I eat a LOT of protein and a LOT of veggies. I don't drink soda very often (yes, I do have a Coke now and again) or add sugar to tea. I eat brown rice, rarely eat "white" stuff. I don't snack on crackers, chips, sweets. I eat a hearty breakfast every day, but it doesn't include bread or sausage, bacon, or ham.


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