What A Calorie Is?

Everybody is “watching their calories”, it appears. There are restaurants which print the number of calories each dish contains, right in the menu. Let us discuss the general structure of nutrition to under the calorie.

How a cell is transformed into energy is not explained by science. We know it as it does happen. Why the cell in the body needs certain particular food only, also we cannot explain. This is so, to enable it to function properly.

Our food gets broken in the body by combining with oxygen. In other words, we may say it is “burnt” up like fuel. Now, we measure the work done by fuel in terms of calories.

A ‘gram calorie’ is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree centigrade. The ‘large calorie’ is 1,000 times as great. In measuring the energy value of food, we generally use large calorie.

Each type of food, on burning, furnishes a certain number of calories. To cite examples: one gram of protein yields four calories, one gram of fat furnishes nine calories. The body does not care as to which ‘fuel’ is used for energy, as long as it gets enough of that energy from food to maintain life. The amount of calories needed by body is related to the work being done by it. A man weighing 70 kg, needs 1680 calories for day if he is in a state of absolute rest. For doing moderate type of work say desk work, the requirement jumps to 3360 calories per day. If required to do heavy work, he may need as much as 6720 calories a day, to maintain body functions properly.

The calorie requirement by children is more than that of adults. The older people cannot burn up the fuel quickly. We use more calories in winter than in summer. Normally, carbohydrates, starch and sugar are the body fuel. If the fuel intake is more than the need, then the surplus is stored away for future use. The body can store up to a maximum of one-third the daily requirement. The rest becomes fat, and that is why we ‘watch our calories’.