Cone
Food · Grain · Food, Typed Supps
A hollow biscuit that holds the ice cream. It is the ice cream that carries the calories.
Stage by stage
- Intake (Wafer softens): Saliva rehydrates the thin baked wafer and it breaks apart with minimal chewing.
- Digestion (Refined starch hydrolysed): Amylase breaks the refined starch down rapidly, with little fibre or fat to slow it.
- Absorption (Glucose enters the blood): Glucose is absorbed quickly, but the total quantity from one cone is very small.
- Use (Energy or storage): The glucose is burned or stored; the cone's contribution is negligible beside the ice cream.
Time to effect
- Under an hour: Glucose from the wafer is absorbed within roughly 20 to 30 minutes, in a very small quantity.
Allergens
None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.
Satiety
105 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
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 402
- Protein: 9.1g
- Carbohydrate: 79.7g
- of which sugars: 2.6g
- Fat: 4g
- of which saturated: 0.7g
- Fibre: 3.2g
- Sodium: 328mg
Food vs. supplement
Not applicable. This is a container for ice cream, and there is no nutrient in it worth planning around.
Kitchen tip
Keep them sealed and dry. A wafer cone is hygroscopic and goes soft within minutes of humid air or a melting scoop; a thin layer of melted chocolate painted inside the cone is the standard trick for keeping it crisp.
Common myth
"Skipping the cone and having a cup saves calories." In reality: Cone types are not interchangeable. The plain wafer cone in these figures is close to unsweetened baked batter — its own sugar content is low and most of what is there is not added. Sugar cones and waffle cones are a different proposition: they are sweetened doughs, heavier, and contribute several times the energy of a wafer cone. The sodium is also worth noticing, since a bland-tasting cone is more salted than most people would guess.
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