What Is A Calorie and How Are Calories Measured?

Nowadays, it seems that just about every second person and their dog is either watching their calories, or counting their calories or even taking note of their calorific/caloric intake in some way or another.

Calories in that case must be important so this hub article is to understand exactly what a calorie is and how we go about measuring calories.

It has been said that Nutrition Scientists and Nutritionists are still not fully able to explain exactly how a cell transforms foods into energy. They just know that it happens.

They also cannot fully explain why the cells in the human body needs certain foods and not others in order to function properly.

They do know that food is broken down in the body by combining with oxygen and it is 'burned up' somewhat like fuel.

The way that they measure the work a food-fuel does is by means of calories.

For example, a 'gram calorie' is the amount of heat that is required to raise the temperature of one gram of water to one degree centigrade and a 'large calorie' otherwise referred to as a 'kilogram calorie' or kilocalorie (kcal) is 1,000 times greater (1/1000) than a gram calorie (cal).

It is usually the large calorie that Nutrition Scientists and Nutritionists use when they measure the energy value of food.

A calorie is the term given to a measurement of energy or heat, in other words a calorie is nothing more than a fuel measurement.

Scientists who specialise in nutrition (Nutrition Scientists) can easily measure the number of calories in food by placing the food sample inside piece of scientific equipment called a Calorimeter.

A calorimeter is a box that has two chambers which are inside one another.

The food sample is weighed and the weight measurement is recorded before the sample of food is put onto a dish and into the inner chamber of the calorimeter.

This inner chamber is then filled up with oxygen and it is then sealed so that no oxygen will be able to escape.

The outer chamber of the calorimeter is then filled up with a measured amount of cold water.

The oxygen in the calorimeter's first chamber (inside the chamber with the water) is then ignited with an electric spark to start the 'burning-off of energy' process.

As the food is being 'burnt-off' it is being watched by a Nutrition Scientist or Lab Assistant and they will record any rise in the temperature of the water inside the calorimeter's outer chamber.

If the temperature of the water increases by 1 degree/kilogram, that means that the food sample being tested has 1 calorie of energy and if it goes up by 2 degrees/kilogram it means that the food sample has 2 calories of energy in it and so on.

So what does this have to do with food?

Although calories can be found in any substance other than food which creates energy, calories have everything to do with food, for the simple reason that we need to eat food to supply us with energy and it is the energy that is found in the foods that we consume that is measured in calories (kcal).

When foods are metabolized, that is, utilized by being combined with oxygen in the body's cells, they give off calories (energy).

Every person needs a different amount of calories to maintain life.

There are also factors such as the person's sex, age, size, weight, physical condition and even the climatic conditions that they live in, that help you to decide how many calories a person needs.

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