What is calorie?

Question

hi, me and my friend are doing a school project. And we were wondering what is a callorie? we need this imformatin for a project on nutrition.

Not the temprature of water, about the callories in food.

Answer 1

calorie is a unit of measure for the amount of heat energy in something


from wiki:
A calorie is a unit of measurement for energy. The unit's name is French and derives from the Latin calor (heat). In most fields, it has been replaced by the joule, the SI unit of energy. However, it remains in common use for the amount of energy obtained from food. Many different definitions for the calorie emerged during the 19th and 20th centuries. They fall into two classes:

The small calorie or gram calorie approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 g of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.185 J.
The large calorie or kilogram calorie approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.185 kJ, and exactly 1000 small calories.
In scientific contexts, the name "calorie" refers strictly to the gram calorie, and this unit has the symbol cal. SI prefixes are used with this name and symbol, so that the kilogram calorie is known as the "kilocalorie" and has the symbol kcal.

Colloquially, and in nutrition and food labelling, the term "calorie" almost always refers to the kilogram calorie. This applies only to English text; if an energy measurement is given using a unit symbol then the scientific practice prevails there. A convention of capitalising "Calorie" to refer to the kilogram calorie, with uncapitalised "calorie" referring to the gram calorie, is sometimes proposed, but neither recognized in any official standards, nor commonly followed.

The conversion factor between calories and joules is numerically equivalent to the specific heat capacity of liquid water (in SI units).

Answer 2

A calorie is a unit of energy. We tend to associate calories with food, but they apply to anything containing energy. Basically when you talk how many calories food has, you are telling how much heat you will get when this calories will burn.
The number of calories in a food is a measure of how much potential energy that food possesses. A gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, a gram of protein has 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories. Foods are a compilation of these three building blocks. So if you know how many carbohydrates, fats and proteins are in any given food, you know how many calories, or how much energy, that food contains.
Our bodies "burn" the calories in the oatmeal through metabolic processes, by which enzymes break the carbohydrates into glucose and other sugars, the fats into glycerol and fatty acids and the proteins into amino acids . These molecules are then transported through the bloodstream to the cells, where they are either absorbed for immediate use or sent on to the final stage of metabolism in which they are reacted with oxygen to release their stored energy.

Answer 3

A calorie is a unit of measurement for energy contained in food or beverage. The more calories you eat, the more you have to burn up or you risk becoming overweight. The energy content of food is usually given on labels for 100 g and for a typical serving size. You can get information on sites like calorielab.com

Answer 4

A 'calorie' is a unit of measurement for energy. In most fields, it has been replaced by the joule, the SI unit of energy. However, it remains in common use for the amount of energy obtained from food. Many different definitions for the calorie have emerged during the 19th and 20th century.

Answer 5

A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a gram of water by one degree Celsius from a standard initial temperature at 1 atmospheric pressure.

Answer 6

calories are units of energy, like jouls. 3500 calories make up 1 pound (lb) of an organisms weight. calories can be called kilocalories (kcal) which is shown on the side of food packages. the average human requires around 2000 kcal a day to sustain a healthy body, however this varies due to activity levels and the metabolism of each individual.

you can quote me on this!!

Answer 7

A calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one cubic centimeter of water one degree centigrade.

Answer 8

The amount of energy required to heat water one degree.

Answer 9

First, it is spelled CALORIE.
Second, it is the same as the temp. of a measure of water.
A kilo-calorie is the amount it takes to raise the measure of water a certain amount of heat.
see http://www.caloriesperhour.com/

Answer 10

some thing about raising the temp of water by 1 degree