Diet Log: Week 6, Day 3

I have been curious for a long time about the Nutritional Information found on packs of gum. The particular brand I prefer to chew is "Wrigley's Eclipse"

Anyway, this gum has 5 calories in it. I have often wondered - Are the calories absorbed merely by the chewing? Or do you actually have to swallow the gum? If they are absorbed by the chewing, then do you ingest Additional calories if you swallow it? If I chew a whole pack of gum in a day, the results could be a significant part of my calorie count. So I decided to pose the question. Unfortunately, I did not save the content of my actual question, and they chose not to include it as part of their reply, so I cannot share the actual question with you - those of you that know me can probably imagine the things I had to say.. This was Three days ago. Today, I got THIS reply. (note, I did NOT use my real name. The form on the website required a name, and due to privacy issues I usually put in a fake name. However, I wanted them to answer the question, so I did not want any of my favorite OBVIOUSLY fake name like "John Doe", "John Johnson", "James Jameson", "King Tut", "Fakey Fakerson III", etc.. SO, I chose the name "Quentin Prey")

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Dear Quentin,

Thank you for contacting the Wrigley Company to request information.
We are always happy to hear from our consumers and will be happy to
answer your question.

In response to your request, the five calories are released from the
gum when you start to chew it. You do not get the calories by swallowing
the gum get them from chewing the gum.

We thank you once again for taking time to contact us.

Sincerely,

Melissa Griffin
Consumer Affairs Representative

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Anyway, In case anybody else has been wondering, there it is. I will try to include pieces of gum in my daily calorie count. By the way, to Melissa for being a good sport and taking seriously what was probably a silly question and a waste of her valuable time (despite the fact that she was obviously in a bit of a hurry when writing that last sentence). Just for that, I am going to give Eclipse a free Plug here - If you like to chew gum, chew Eclipse. It is tasty, makes your breath smell nice (somebody actually said that to me), and the flavor last longer than most gums. At $1.19 for 12, it is a little pricey, but you can get the three-pack for $1.99 at Walmart, or you could go to BJ's and get the 12-pack for about $6.

Workout: 45 minutes on the treadmill. I watched an old taped version of The new adventures of Old Christine. That is really a horrible show. I have watched a couple of episodes, only because I will usually give anybody that used to be on Seinfeld a chance. But I cannot stress how awful this show is. I would rather watch The View - well, maybe not. But it's pretty close. Also did the requisite 40 pushups and situps.

Weigh-in: -17 Woohoo! I was afraid that taking the lower value yesterday would come back to haunt me today, but I guess not. This is an all new low.

Breakfast: 2 hardboild eggs. 152 Calories

Lunch: Another Egg-Salad sandwich. I have forgotten how much I like Egg-salad. I think I could eat it every day (if not for the crippling amounts of cholseterol) especially with nice fresh crispy lettuce and tomatoes. Also served with the sandwich instead of the chips I chose a salad. Today the salad du Jour was some sort of mystery leaf (looked kind of like spinach leaves but tasted like air - so it must have been some fancy type of lettuce), shredded carrots, and shredded cabage with a single solitary tomato piece in there. It also had this pink dressing on top, but when I started eating it, I realized what looked like pink dressing was really water from the washing of the mystery leaves that had absorbed some of the color (but not the flavor - because there IS none) of the cabbage. I cannot imagine there are any calories in such a worthless salad, so I will just count the ones from the sandwich - about 400.

Pieces of Gum: up to 2 so far, but the one in my mouth is starting to taste a little bit like poo - so I will probably spit it out pretty soon. Let's say 3. 15 Calories:

Dinner: Got home and discovered that we are totally out of eggs. Apparently, the rest of my family has followed my lead - so unless I wanted to make a late-night run to the market, I had to get creative. I started with a bowl of salad and put Ceaser dressing (egg yolks in the dressing) on it for about 200 Calories. Then I had a small bowl of leftover pasta with the Alfred sauce (also made with egg yolks) for another 200. I was still pretty hungry, though. I found 3/4 of a Burger King Chicken parmesean sandwich in the fridge which my wife did not care for. I can see why - it wasn't very good. Unfortunately, Burger King has a horrible website with no mention of this particular sandwich, so I have to guess. I cannot imagine it is any worse than the one from Wendys, so I'm going to estimate 400 Calories. Total for dinner: 800 calories.

Calories for the day: 1367