Cake

Food · Grain · Food, Typed Supps

All cakes are sweet. What really separates them is how much butter, oil or cream is in the crumb.

Stage by stage

Intake (Crumb breaks down): The aerated, low-fibre crumb disperses with minimal chewing and starch digestion starts in the mouth.
Digestion (Sugar and starch broken down): Refined flour and sugar are digested quickly; fat in butter and mud cakes slows stomach emptying.
Bloodstream (Fast glycaemic rise): Sugars and gelatinised starch are absorbed rapidly, producing a high glycaemic response.
Longer term (Saturated fat load): The saturated fat, which varies several-fold across the family, is what accumulates with regular intake.

Time to effect

Under an hour: Blood glucose rises within roughly 30 to 60 minutes of a slice.

Allergens

Contains: Gluten. May contain: Eggs. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

106 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — moderate. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.

Environmental footprint

1.6 kg CO2e and 648 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Wheat & rye" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Cheap — roughly £2.5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Added sugar
Saturated fat
Refined starch

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 295
Protein: 4.7g
Carbohydrate: 48g
of which sugars: 31.5g
Fat: 9.4g
of which saturated: 6.9g
Fibre: 2.4g
Sodium: 218mg

Food vs. supplement

Not applicable. Cake is a celebration food and the honest comparison is with other desserts, not with any nutrient it might contribute.

Kitchen tip

If the point is a lighter slice, choose by cake type before choosing by portion. An uniced sponge, plain or jam-filled, is the leanest thing in this family by a wide margin; the mud cakes are the richest, and ganache icing adds fat as well as sugar.

Common myth

“Sponge, butter cake and mud cake are all much the same thing.” In reality: They are close on sugar and very far apart on fat. A plain uniced sponge carries only a few grams of fat per 100g; a ganache-iced mud cake carries several times that, and the energy density follows the fat.