Calories, macro-nutrients and labels (part 2)

Each type of macro-nutrient contains a certain number of calories. We must learn to count and read the labels, which is really not difficult.

Recall basic elements for understanding

What is a calorie?

A calorie is nothing but an energy measure (heat) equal to 4.1868 joules. The official definition: it is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 ° C, under standard conditions.

What are macro-nutrients?

When you work with people, and I like their giving directions in terms of calories, I would stress the importance of your note somewhere ingested macro-nutrients throughout the day.

4 macro-nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and alcohol.

Below, the amount of calories for each gram of different macro-nutrients

 
- Protein: 4 calories

- Carbohydrate: 4 calories

- Fat: 9 calories

- Alcohol: 7 calories

How to read a nutrition label?

Below this is a picture of a nutrition label. I leave aside the percentages micro-nutrient because it is beyond the scope of this article.

The first step to accurately track your calorie intake is to read a label.

- The first macro you see is the total amount of fat in a serving (here portion is 226 grams), which includes saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and trans fats.

- Below you will see the total amount of carbohydrates, which include sugars and dietary fiber.

- And finally at the end, you will see the protein.

 
In this example, we have 13 grams of fat, 31 grams of carbohydrates and 5 grams of protein.

So in this case, the label shows 260 calories. But how do they achieve this?

A simple calculation:

- 13 (grams of fat) x 9 (amount of calories per gram of fat) = 117 calories.

- In addition, carbohydrates and proteins have an equal amount of calories per gram, simply add them together first: 31 + 5 = 36gr. 36gr × 4 = 144 calories

- Total: 144 + 117 = 261 calories.

part 1 Introduction
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