The Mensa Diet - Futility Closet

Finding himself hot and overweight at an Air Force base during World War II, Jerry Salny decided he could shed pounds by drinking scotch and soda. Here’s his reasoning:

It takes 1 calorie of heat to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1° Celsius.
A glass holds about 200 cc of scotch, soda, and ice. Its temperature is 0° Celsius.
As he drinks the scotch and soda, his body must supply enough heat to raise 200 grams to body temperature, or 37°C.
That’s 200 grams × 37°C, or 7,400 calories.
“Since all the calorie books show scotch as having 100 calories per ounce, and none at all for the soda, we should be able to drink scotch and soda all day and lose weight like mad.”

“This has been tried,” Salny reported, “and although the experimenter hasn’t lost any weight in the process, he doesn’t worry about it much anymore.”

Why doesn’t it work?

	Select Click for Answer
There are two different calorie measures. An ounce of scotch contains 100 kilocalories, not 100 calories. So with each ounce he drank, Salny took in 100,000 calories and used up only about 1,000. Nice try, though.