Wouldn’t drinking a pound of oil disprove the commonly-cited “3500 cals in a pound” figure?

If you drank a pound of pure oil, assuming all of it went directly into adipose tissue (an extreme assumption), you would have gained one pound of fat having ingested (454g•(9cal/g)) = 4086 calories. This is notably higher than the commonly quoted “3500 cals per pound” figure. If you then inject some realism and assume that some of that oil is either metabolized (and thus given off as CO2) or excreted, then for the same 4086 calories, you’re gaining *less* than a pound, and the implied cals per pound figure would rise even higher than 4086–a far cry from 3500. Am I thinking about this the wrong way? You could do the same thought experiment with a “pure carbs” meal, and the implied cals/lb figure in the absence of respiration/excretion would go the opposite direction—down to 454g•(4cal/g)) = 1816 calories per pound. So I don’t know *what* to make of all this haha. Thanks for any clarification you can provide!

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1lb Adipose tissue tissue is not equal 1lb of pure fat/lipid. Also the chemical formula for adipose tissue is an approximation of all the different types of fatty acids that comprises adipose tissue. Different fatty acids chains have different lengths which translates to slightly different potential energy

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if you drank a pound of oil it would pass through your body like a hot knife through butter. you would have no bowel continence as the oil and everything it carries would soil your pants before you realize what’s happening. it might even put you in the er or kill you.

the 3500 calories per lb of weight loss/gain is an approximation. it may be significantly different for different people. our bodies are unique and complex, and nutrition science is almost always approximate.

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I thought the 3500 calories to a pound referred just to human fat as a rule of thumb for losing or gaining weight. I haven’t ever seen it applied to a pound of food. Oil seems denser than fat. Maybe you should use a pound of unrendered animal fat in your thought experiment.