What you don’t know about calories
In-depth understanding and its relationship to health
When I became interested in nutrition, and I offered human nutrition as one of the courses in my field of study, I kept hearing about calories, like carbohydrates give these amounts of calories, yam gives this amount of calories or when weight loss fads, social media contents, etc tells you to reduce your caloric intake, I just keep wondering what calories are.
You know, it’s just like what people always say you won’t be taught everything and I think smart people can just get the meaning of calories by just looking at it, but you see, I needed to read just particularly what calories are and then
Eureka!
caloric intake is energy intake
I should stop here right, I mean everybody knows what energy is but then understanding matters to me, so I continue.
Calories can be small or big according to scientific definitions, a small calorie is the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, while a big calorie is the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius. I.e big calorie is equivalent to 1000 small calories.
In nutrition, the big calories are used, and it’s represented by C or Cal or Kcal.
in other words, calories are the unit of energy, the amount of energy you consume when you eat a particular food at a particular size is represented by calories.
Now knowing that calories are the unit of energy, So what does it mean that carbohydrates contain 4Kcal, why do I have to care about this?
You need to care about this to control your energy intake and your decisions. You need to know whether you are going according to the government-approved calories of the day, which is 2000 calories. to check for yourself whether you’re a physically active person or you are more of the sedentary lifestyle kind of person and know the quantity of food you should be eating.
The government made it a rule for the food industry to provide labels like calorie per 100 grams or calorie per serving to help you in deciding the quantity of energy you need to take into the body.
Quick story!
I was hungry one day and was ready to consume belle full Indomie noodles,l bought the Indomie and unconsciously decided to check the nutrition label, so I checked the label to see the quantity of energy I would consume, mind you that this labels always come with calorie per 100 grams and then gives you the gram of the whole food, so for each 100 gram of bellyful indomie, I get 450 calories, that is 450 energy to do work right! Bear in mind is 305 grams, so I get approximately 450 * 3 equals 1350 calories if I consume bellyful indomie, now this is just for breakfast let’s give it four to five hours, and I want to eat again before the end of the day I would be way over the 2000 daily Caloric intake recommended value and I may still not be full at the end of the day, but I already surpassed the RDI for the day, I ended up buying one superstar, smaller-sized indomie, what knowing some of these things can do for you.
so how would I know the caloric intake of cooked food?
OK, may this will help, so for every cube of Maggi is 4 grams, use that to picture the amount of food on your plate for packaged foods, it’s always written down on the labels but remember the labels always come with preserving up to 100 grams so be careful when reading the label.
What am I saying, caloric intake is safe to be called energy intake, when you are not physically active, calories are not burned, and your weight suffers that is why you need to be conscious of the calories you take in because more calories equals weight gain.
