The official definition of calorie is: A measurement of
energy- the amount of energy needed to raise 1 gram of water 1
degree Celsius at standard atmospheric pressure. Calories in
food are actually measured in kilocalories, so 1,000 actual
calories for every 1 Calorie listed on food packages. Europe
uses the actual kilocalories or kilojoules.
During the 1880s,
Wilbur O. Atwater decided to determine how much energy different
types of foods contained. He decided to treat different foods
just like coal and burn them to ash in a furnace and measure how
much heat (or calories) each one produced. He gave a numerical
value to the calories produced by each food. He measured nine
calories per gram from high-fat foods, and about four calories
per gram from carbohydrates and proteins. We still use this
system, to an extent.
During 2003, a US
university team of nutritionists tested two slimming diets with
the same number of calories on a group of overweight women. One
diet was very low-fat and relatively high in carbohydrate. The
other was high in fat, but low in carbohydrate. The low-fat
dieters lost 3.9kg (almost 9lb), but the high-fat dieters lost
more than twice as much weight at 8.5kg (almost 19lb).
The calories are the
same, but the body reacts differently when it uses them. Maybe
it is time to rethink how we count calories.
Calories listed on food
labels are only an approximation. The US FDA allows food
manufacturers to look at their ingredients and determine how
many grams of fat, carbohydrates, and protein they contain, and
then assume that each gram of protein and carbohydrates gives 4
kilocalories, each gram of fat gives 9, etc. Then they subtract
4 kilocalories for every gram of fiber, and that is the
official, government sanctioned calorie measurement.
In addition to the
above, different bodies deal with Calories differently. Genetic
conditions, illnesses, and other factors can cause foods to be
metabolized differently by some people vs. others. A 100 Calorie
snack for you, might only be an 80 Calorie snack for someone
else.
Bottom line, since
Calories are an
approximation, ingesting a few hundred more or less on any given
day is not going to make much difference on your weight.
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