Deserts do not have Calories, but
desserts do. Of course, getting your just deserts means getting what
you deserve. So getting your deserts and getting your desserts might
be the same thing. No wonder there is such confusion about the
words.
Calories share the same type of confusion. A calorie is a unit of
measure required to increase the temperature of one kilogram of
water one degree Celsius. A food Calorie is actually 1,000 calories
compared to calories in chemistry. Usually calories are spelled with
a small "c" and food Calories spelled with capital "C".
Food Calories are counted, according to the National Data Lab,
based on an indirect calorie estimation made using the Atwater
system. The total caloric value is calculated by adding up the
calories provided by the energy-containing nutrients: protein,
carbohydrate, fat and alcohol. Because carbohydrates contain some
fiber that is not digested and utilized by the body, the fiber
component is usually subtracted from the total carbohydrate before
calculating calories. The label on a food item that contains 10 g of
protein, 20 g of carbohydrate and 9 g of fat would read 201 kcals or
Calories.