Is it the calories, or is it the weight?

Today’s lunch time discussion centered on food and weight gain. The question that was posed was this: Neglecting influences such as metabolism, exercise and such, if you eat a pound (or kilogram) of food and nothing else, can you gain more than a pound of weight.
The actual answer to the question itself wasn’t important. What I thought was more interesting was the distribution of answers. One of my friends at work asked a few random people in the cafeteria at lunch. Almost all the men said no, if you eat a pound of food, the most you could gain was a pound of weight.

However, the women that were asked all responded by saying yes it was possible, and that it was the calories that mattered, not the weight. Most of them quoted the rule of thumb saying 3500 food calories = 1 lb, so if that 1 lb of food you just ate had 5000 calories, then you could gain more than 1 lb of weight.

Interesting. So if eating 1 lb of food can make you gain more than 1 lb of weight, where does the extra come from? On the other hand, if calories is the only thing that’s important then eat as much as you want as long as it’s low-caloric density food.

Of course to really answer the question you need to factor in variables such as metabolism, physical activity and the like.

So how would you answer? Based on the trend from my friend’s informal poll, you’d say no if you were a guy, and yes if you were a woman.