Watermelon, fattening?

Okay I just heard my grandmother spout out that watermelon is fattening.

My family eats like, one half slice about 1 - 1.5 inches thick. I will just have a quarter slice the same thickness... Is that quantity about 3 times a week harmful to your weight?

I wouldn't think it is too bad. You just have to remember that watermelon is a fruit which means nice and sugary. Other than that...it's mostly water.

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-waterm elon-i9326?size=4

Watermelon itself is not fattening...eating too many calories in one day is.

Anything is fattening if you eat too much of it....nothing is fattening if proper portion control is practiced (I wouldn't go eating a few spoonfuls of crisco but you get the point)

One feature of watermelon is that it's quite sugary, watery (obviously) and doesn't have the fibre that some other fruits offer.   So it'll be refreshing but not particularly filling.  You might find you feel hungry again quite quickly after eating it.

Yes, calories are calories and they all add up; but the body still processes, converts, and uses calories from different foods in different ways.  And good calories have a different effect on the body than bad calories.  I don't know if eating 800 calories of fresh fruits with all their natural sugars has the same effect on the body as eating 800 calories of candy bars.  Frankly, I would say eat way more watermelon, or any melon such as honey dew or cantaloupe, or eat papayas, fresh pineapple, fresh peaches, fresh berries, and mangoes than you are eating.  But you would have to be eating a heck of a lot of watermelon to be worried about weight gain from it, in my opinion.

I don't know where this nonsense comes from.  A whole cup of diced watermelon has only 46 calories.  Eat it - all you want.   The original weight watchers diet, for some wierd reason, listed watermelon as a no-no fruit, when it's as low in calories as strawberries, grapefruit or cantaloupe. 

There are no "fattening" foods, only portions that are too large and too high in calories.  This isn't some kind of magic, it's science - burn more calories than you eat and you will lose weight.

I wonder if "MythBusters" would do a show where test subjects such as identical twins would try something like this:  Each would be tested for weight, BMR, RMR, BMI, etc.  Each would eat exactly the same foods with one exception and do exactly the same activities.  One would eat in one's week time 5 pounds of butter (32,560 calories) and the other would eat watermelon worth 32,560 calories.  If I understand things correctly, each should gain the same amount, since 3500 calories equals a pound.  However, absolutely without having any scientific evidence to support my contention, I contend that the person who ate the butter would gain more weight.

Original Post by pilgrimdude:

I wonder if "MythBusters" would do a show where test subjects such as identical twins would try something like this:  Each would be tested for weight, BMR, RMR, BMI, etc.  Each would eat exactly the same foods with one exception and do exactly the same activities.  One would eat in one's week time 5 pounds of butter (32,560 calories) and the other would eat watermelon worth 32,560 calories.  If I understand things correctly, each should gain the same amount, since 3500 calories equals a pound.  However, absolutely without having any scientific evidence to support my contention, I contend that the person who ate the butter would gain more weight.

 But.. the watermelon can be converted directly to fat. The butter would have to be converted to energy, then back to fat.

So I take the opposite and say the watermelon. :P But only by .06 lbs.

Original Post by clown8516:

no fruit is fattening as long as its eating raw. trust me, in fact the more raw fruit you eat the leaner and healthier you will become. so think of fruit as a free food. and don't worry about your blood sugar because raw fruit will not raise it.

 

This is completely untrue.  *Any* food is fattening if you eat too much of it.  Admittedly, it would take awful lot of watermelon - but if you were to consume 10 pounds of the stuff, that's a lot of calories and they certainly would count.

Original Post by susiecue:

Original Post by clown8516:

no fruit is fattening as long as its eating raw. trust me, in fact the more raw fruit you eat the leaner and healthier you will become. so think of fruit as a free food. and don't worry about your blood sugar because raw fruit will not raise it.

 

This is completely untrue.  *Any* food is fattening if you eat too much of it.  Admittedly, it would take awful lot of watermelon - but if you were to consume 10 pounds of the stuff, that's a lot of calories and they certainly would count.

 I would like to meet someone who could consume 10 pounds of watermelon a day.

Original Post by buckcherry:

Original Post by susiecue:

Original Post by clown8516:

no fruit is fattening as long as its eating raw. trust me, in fact the more raw fruit you eat the leaner and healthier you will become. so think of fruit as a free food. and don't worry about your blood sugar because raw fruit will not raise it.

 

This is completely untrue.  *Any* food is fattening if you eat too much of it.  Admittedly, it would take awful lot of watermelon - but if you were to consume 10 pounds of the stuff, that's a lot of calories and they certainly would count.

 I would like to meet someone who could consume 10 pounds of watermelon a day.

they'd probably look something like this:

http://www.myspacecomedy.com/images/funny/wat ermelon-man.jpg

(It's not actually all that hard to eat a pound of watermelon in a sitting.  I don't know that I can picture doing that ten times a day, but I'm sure there's someone out there who could.)

LOL Good one, runningbuns.

A person could eat 10 pounds in 3 days fairly easily though.  And I still can not come to grips with the fact that watermelon calories effect weight gain the same as butter would.  Of course, I have a difficult time understanding how astronuts could leave our planet and travel at lightspeed and return, but the people on earth would have aged drastically and the astronuts wouldn't.  Heck I don't even comprehend an automobile engine.  But I just don't think eating a lot of fruit, even adding the extra calories, will effect weight gain the same as something like cookies and cake, for example.

Original Post by clown8516:

no fruit is fattening as long as its eating raw. trust me, in fact the more raw fruit you eat the leaner and healthier you will become. so think of fruit as a free food. and don't worry about your blood sugar because raw fruit will not raise it.

 

 

I disagree with thinking of fruit as a "free food".  I eat a lot of fruit & if I didn't count the calories in it I could easily go 500 calories over my limit each day. (not with massive amounts of watermelon...but  2 banana, 2 apples & a pear is around 500 calories...& those aren't "free calories"!)

32,560 kcal of watermelon ... hmmm, that's just a tad short of 110kg (242 lbs), so it is obviously less fattening than the butter (a mere 4.5kg!) - just think of the energy expended in munching through 110kg and then digesting and excreting that lot.

Just out of curiosity...[and I suppose I could try this since I have spent pretty much the entire month of August "experimenting" with my diet (having almost concluded my "insanity cookie" diet) in bizarre ways]...has anyone ever logged calorie consumption by eating, say, 500 extra calories from fruit each day and actually proved he/she gained weight? 

Fruits? What definition do we use?  Are tomatoes, cucumbers, and red-orange-yellow bell peppers fruits (because they have seeds) or vegetables (because they are eaten with the main entrees and not for desserts)? I have read and heard the comment "Eat all the vegetables you want in your diet."

If someone can find any studies  that eating "extra" things like apples, tomatoes, cucumbers, and watermelon adds appreciable weight gain, I would be interested in reading them just out of curiosity.  I am not arguing that calories are calories and and that too many calories cause weight gain, I just don't think "extra" eating of most fruits and vegetables in general will cause weight gain in the same way that eating certain other foods will.

Original Post by clown8516:

no fruit is fattening as long as its eating raw.

Question - what happens when you cook it? It becomes magically fattening?

Followup - what does baked watermelon taste like?

Original Post by gi-jane:

One feature of watermelon is that it's quite sugary, watery (obviously) and doesn't have the fibre that some other fruits offer. So it'll be refreshing but not particularly filling. You might find you feel hungry again quite quickly after eating it.

On the contrary, after eating a bowl of watermelon chunk I'm full for a long time! All that water is very filling to me. haha

For what it's worth, watermelon is very high on the glycemic index, in the 70's, about the same as table sugar.  To your blood, eating 2 cups of watermelon is the same as eating 7 teaspoons of sugar, absolutely no difference.   With little bulk and little fibre, there is nothing in watermelon to slow absorption into your system, resulting in feeling full quickly but feeling empty quickly too.  It spikes your blood sugar, putting a load on your pancreas.   Eating a cup or two wouldn't have much effect but I know lots of people that sit and eat it piece after piece and their blood sugar must be going through the roof.  And you know what the body does when it is flooded with more energy than it can use...it's stored as fat. 

An apple on the other hand, to compare, is in the 30's on the glycemic index, quite low, because it has bulk and fibe, both of which slow things down, leaving you feeling fuller, longer, calorie for calorie.

Everything in moderation kids..everything in moderation. 

Original Post by johnnypenso:

For what it's worth, watermelon is very high on the glycemic index, in the 70's, about the same as table sugar.  To your blood, eating 2 cups of watermelon is the same as eating 7 teaspoons of sugar, absolutely no difference.   With little bulk and little fibre, there is nothing in watermelon to slow absorption into your system, resulting in feeling full quickly but feeling empty quickly too.  It spikes your blood sugar, putting a load on your pancreas.   Eating a cup or two wouldn't have much effect but I know lots of people that sit and eat it piece after piece and their blood sugar must be going through the roof.  And you know what the body does when it is flooded with more energy than it can use...it's stored as fat. 

An apple on the other hand, to compare, is in the 30's on the glycemic index, quite low, because it has bulk and fibe, both of which slow things down, leaving you feeling fuller, longer, calorie for calorie.

Everything in moderation kids..everything in moderation. 

Well Said.