What Makes up Calories?

We all know that calories can easily run our life. We want to know how many calories everything is that goes in our mouths. We realize that eating too many calories makes us gain weight and eating fewer calories can assist us in losing weight. But, Where do Calories come from? What makes up Calories? In this post I will answer that question.

What Makes up Calories

Protein, Carbohydrates, fat and even alcohol provide calories. Here is the breakdown:

one (1) gram of:

• Protein contains 4 calories
• Carbohydrate contains 4 calories
• Fat contains 9 calories
• Alcohol contains 7 calories.

Water, minerals, vitamin, fiber or cholesterol provide no calories.

Most foods are a combination of these things…. protein, fat, and carbohydrate, etc. So, a food’s calorie count is the sum of the calories provided by each ingredient.

Need an example of how to figure out how calories are made up? Let’s take a look at a bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup. This bowl contain 3 grams of protein, 7 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of for for a total of 58 calories:

• 3 grams protein x 4 calories/gram = 12 Calories
• 7 grams carbs x 4 calories/gram = 28 Calories
• 2 grams fat x 9 calories/gram = 18 calories
• TOTAL = 58 Calories

Well, you might wonder if a food is made up of multiple parts then how come people call food items a carb or a protein if it is made up of multiple parts.

The answer is that they pick the predominant nutrient. Another words, a bagel or a bowl of cereal are considered carbohydrate foods even thought they also contain protein and sometimes fat. The predominant nutrient is a carb, so that is what people tend to call it.

Now you understand how a calorie is made up. Keep an eye out for my next post when I show you how track the calories you eat.

Tagged as: Basics, Calories, diet, health, lose weight