Nutritional Nugget - What is a Calorie?

Food labels list Calories per serving. People talk about cutting Calories out of their diet. There are terms like "low cal" and "no cal" on snacks and other foods. But how much do you know about Calories?

There are no images of the structure of calorie. You cannot see a calorie under a microscope. A calorie is a unit of measure for thermal energy. Our food contains energy or "fuel" for our bodies in the form of nutrients. After digestion, our bodies use or store this energy.

Did you know that what we call Calories are actually kilocalories? That is why the letter "c" is capitalized; it means kilocalorie (kcal). Fun science fact, it takes a kilocalorie of energy to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius. So, a Calorie is the amount of energy you will use or store from a particular food. Calories are important to a healthy lifestyle. We will dive deeper into Calories in future blog posts.