The kind we measure in food
We
hear about calories all the time. How many calories are in this cookie? How
many are burned by 100 jumping jacks, or long distance running or fidgeting?
But what is a calorie, really, and how many of them do we actually need?
Calories are a way of keeping track of the body's energy budget.
A
healthy balance occurs when we put in about as much energy as we lose. If we
consistently put more energy into our bodies than we burn the excess will
gradually be stored as fat in our cells and we'll gain weight. If we burn off
more energy than we replenish, we'll lose weight. So we have to be able to
measure the energy we consume and use and we do so with a unit called calorie.
One
calorie, the kind we measure in food, also called a large calorie is defined as
the amount of energy it would take to raise the temperature of one kilogram of
water by one degree Celsius. Everything we consume has a calorie count. A
measure of how much energy the item stores in its chemical bonds. The average
pizza slice has 272 calories, There are about 78 in a piece of bread and an
apple has about 52. That energy is released during digestion and stored in
other molecules that can be broken down to provide energy when the body needs
it. It's used in three ways about 10% enables digestion about 20% fuels
physical activity and the biggest chunk, around 70%,supports the basic
functions of our organs and tissues.
A
number of calories you would need to survive if you weren't eating or moving
around. Add in some physical activity and digestion and arrive at the official
guidelines for how many calories the average person requires each day 2000 for
women and 2500 for men. Estimates are based on factors like average weight,
physical activity and muscle mass. So does that mean everyone should shoot for
around 2000 calories? Not necessarily.
If
you're doing energy guzzling activity like cycling your body could use up to
9000 calories per day. Pregnancy requires slightly more calories than usual and
elderly people typically have a slower metabolic rate and energy is burned more
gradually.
Here's
something else you should know before you start counting calories. The calorie
counts on nutrition labels measure how much energy the food contains, not how
much energy you can actually get out of it. Fibrous foods like celery and whole
wheat take more energy to digest. So you'd actually wind up with less energy
from a 100 calorie serving of celery than a 100 calorie serving of potato
chips. Not to mention the fact that some foods offer nutrients like protein and
vitamins while others provide far less nutritional value.
Eating
too many of those foods could leave you overweight and malnourished. And even
with the exact same food different people might not get the same number of
calories. Variations in things like enzyme levels, gut bacteria and even
intestine length means that every individual's ability to extract energy from
food is a little different.
So
a calorie is a useful energy measure but to work out exactly how many of them
each of us require. We need to factor in things like exercise, food type and
our body's ability to process energy.
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