Calories In Bone?

[orange&white]

I'm trying to put together a spreadsheet of calorie counts for my raw food mixes. Calories per ounce are easy to find for meat and organs, but I can't find anything for bone. Maybe it's never been studied because we humans don't sit down and munch on a big pile of bones, like our pets are able to do.

Anyway, chicken bones are 10% of all my mixes. The exterior, hard "boney" part of bone is mainly calcium carbonate and collagen so it probably doesn't have many calories. However, red bone marrow is primarily red blood cells and fat and may be fairly calorie dense.

Also I've noticed that almost all chicken bones contain red bone marrow (versus beef marrow bones which are predominantly fatty yellow marrow). My guess is that red marrow is slightly lower in calories than yellow marrow.

Taking a shot in the dark that someone here has done the research and actually found an answer. I'm coming up with nothing.

 

[lalagimp]

This was on the internet See How Many Calories in Chicken bones & More at FitClick

 

[orange&white]

Thank you! I'll go with that over the nothing burger I found. Not sure I trust the data though. When I typed in 3 pounds of chicken bone, it said there is zero calcium content.

Kind of like the US Nutrition data base says that chicken hearts are 56% calories from fat...fattier than they report for beef chuck shoulder roast.

Oh well. We live in an imperfect world with imperfect data. I'll take it. Thanks again.

 

[mschauer]

I don't know what USDA database entry you are looking at. There isn't one for "chuck shoulder roast". All of the entries for some kind of "chuck shoulder" cut are cuts that are trimmed to 0% fat. I don't find it difficult to believe those cuts are actually lower in fat than chicken hearts. All of the chicken hearts I've seen have a good sized fat cap. YMMV of course.

You have to be careful when using the USDA database to be sure that the entry you use is representative of the cut of meat you are using. That isn't always easy especially with beef cuts where a given cut may be known by different names.

BTW, the source of the information for chicken bones at that link is a user with the handle of "ZHV6" with no information for where he/she got the information. Just an FYI.

 

[orange&white]

Yes, I'm using the 0% trim chuck shoulder data for boneless "country-style" beef ribs I purchase (which are cut from the shoulder). They have no exterior fat, but there is certainly marbling within the meat which makes them "look" fattier to me than the hearts, even with the fat cap.

Anyway, I always question data and suspect errors...especially when the US government is involved.

Common sense tells me some of this data is wrong, but I'm using the closest numbers I can find without making arbitrary adjustments. US nutrition database is "the best" we have.

Back to chicken bones -

mschauer...Do you have any better idea or data source about the calorie content of chicken bones? I did find one other website that had the same data as the site that lalagimp linked. I have to plug in some number, because "0" is definitely wrong.

 

[mschauer]

I haven't looked for calorie data per se for chicken bones. I have looked for nutrient data for bone in general. When I look closely at the data I find there is always one or both of two problems. One is that the bone data isn't for a specific bone. There is a big difference between wing bones and thigh bones. Second the data usually is the amount of nutrients per some weight of the output of a deboning machine. Those bones still have a significant amount of tissue clinging to them. Exactly how much depends on the machine. I don't consider that to be a valid way of determining the nutrient content of just bone. The data is usually intended to be used by manufacturers who will process the bone plus tissue to extract just the nutrients they want.

I've seen many online blog or message board posts where someone has claimed they found nutrient information for bone but every time I have investigated the source of the data I have come to the conclusion that it isn't usable for our purposes.

But, again, I've never looked for just the calorie content of chicken bone.

I'm pretty fussy about what nutrient data I accept for use in my analyses. I frequently help people who require a diet specially formulated for an ill cat. I take the responsibility of providing as accurate an analysis as possible very seriously.

The USDA database is used by researchers all over the world who cite it in their research papers. Further, other countries, Canada and Australia for instance, use the USDA database as the "base" for their own counties food nutrient database. They add or modify entries to tailor it to be more representative of their own foods but obviously find it generally reliable.

Also, I am a paid consultant for a company that produces a well known pre-mix for raw pet foods. They use my analyses, including meat protein entries from the USDA database, in the early stages of new product development. In the later stages they send samples to a lab for analysis. My analysis has always compared favorably with the lab analysis, favorably enough that they continue to use my service.

As for entering "something" rather than 0, my view is that unless I have credible data to use then I have no data. To do otherwise is no better than just pulling a number out of the air.

 

[orange&white]

I agree with using the US data, even when I believe it to be flawed. If 10 analysts use consistent data from the same source, then the analyses will all match at least, even if every one ends with imperfect information. As an analyst, you know the phrase GIGO "Garbage in, garbage out".

At least as an analyst I am fairly certain that I know "where" the data is likely to be flawed whereas a layman will accept numbers at face value.

As for entering "something" rather than 0, my view is that unless I have credible data to use then I have no data. To do otherwise is no better than just pulling a number out of the air.

It certainly is pulling a number out of the air, but we know for a fact that "0" is false, so I'm going with the "5.67" calories per ounce unless some better data comes along. If I just give up saying, "I have "no data" because the data isn't credible", then I can never finish my project. I will know that my calorie counts are not 100% accurate due to some missing and incorrect data (including the data on chicken hearts...for which I still have no faith in the database numbers).