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| calorie | |||||||||||||||
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People talk about calories; they damn them, but few know what a
calorie is: a unit used to measure energy, specifically the amount of
heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree
Celsius. What concerns dieters, however, is food energy, correctly
measured with the Calorie (with a capital C ) or kilocalorie
(kcal), meaning 1,000 calories. However, most dietitians, nutritionists
and other food professionals simply use calorie (small c )
when they mean kilocalorie. Are all calories created equal? Yes,
even though the body seems to pack on FAT
calories faster than others. As someone said when wolfing down a bowl of
superpremium ice cream, "I might as well just glue it on my
hips." There's good reason for this. Gram for gram, fat contains
more calories (food energy) than either PROTEIN
or CARBOHYDRATE.
1 g fat = 9 calories How many calories should you consume each day? It depends on your age, height, weight, whether you're active or sedentary, whether you're trying to gain weight, lose weight or maintain weight. And certainly, your basal metabolic rate is a factor. You gain weight when you consume more calories than your body needs,
and lose when you consume fewer. Although there are no hard-and-fast
rules, we offer these ballpark figures as a guideline.
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