C-A-L-O-R-I-E-S: just what are they, exactly?

Credit: grocerystoregal

Would it surprise you if we told you that for every calorie you think you’re chowing down on, you’re really consuming 1000 times that amount?

When we talk about food calories, we’re really speaking of calories in the thousands, or kilocalories. So fear not, you haven’t exceeded your recommended daily calorie intake if you have religiously kept it to be under 2,000 calories.

All this hype about consuming less calories calls for an investigation. Many folks who are heretofore unlearned in the ways of the calorie (yours truly included) do not have the foggiest on why the health conscious willingly bind themselves to a 2,000 calorie diet regiment, and what the term “fattening” really means.

While we are a long shot from calling ourselves professional nutritionists, follow our investigation, and we will attempt to enlighten you a little.

What is a calorie, really?

A calorie is a unit of energy, and is not exclusive to food only. You might have heard of a kilojoule (kJ). Well, a food calorie is roughly 4.184 kJ. To be scientifically correct, one calorie is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C

Bringing that into perspective, one gram of fat has 9 food calories (or 37 kJ), a gram of ethanol (alcohol) has 7 calories (29 kJ) and when it comes carbohydrates, along with protein, a gram has 4 calories (17 kJ).

That probably didn’t help very much. Try this: based on our rough calculations, one serving of nasi lemak has about 644 calories, which can potentially power a 60W light bulb for 12.5 hours; 120g of cheesecake (about 420 calories) can light the same bulb for 8.2 hours.

How much do we need?

Our calorie requirements differ from one individual to another, but you will notice that some labels on food products will have their ‘percent daily values’ based on a 2,000 calorie diet. 2,000 calories is an estimated average of what a regular person might require to perform daily tasks in the day, but height, weight and gender are to be taken into account if you want to get a more accurate estimation.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the amount of energy your body requires to function at rest. It is calculated with the Harris-Benedict formula (the 655 for females is not a typo, just in case you were wondering):

• Adult male: 66 + (6.3 x body weight in lbs.) + (12.9 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)
• Adult female: 655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs.) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)

The result is the estimated amount of calories your body require to simply function. In other words, we need calories in order to survive, don’t even think for a second about going for a zero calorie diet, not that it exists anyway. Obviously, physical activity plays a huge part in determining the amount of energy you would require in a day, though it is only second to your BMR. Leisure cycling, for instance, burns 236 calories per hour if you weigh about 58 kg.

So as you can see, it’s pretty much basic maths. Fat doesn’t make you fat, not directly anyway. We need to consume a certain amount of good fat everyday to ensure we have a balanced and healthy diet. It’s overconsumption of calories that make you fat, and it just so happens that fat is more calorifically dense, so it’s easier to go over your recommended daily calories consumption if you eat too much fat.

The general rule is that if you consume 7,000 calories equals 1 kilogram of fat. So if you consume 7,000 calories that aren’t required by your body, it will store it in the form of 1 kilogram of fat. Overeat by 500 calories everyday for 2 weeks, and you’ll gain a kilo of fat.

Losing weight

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