What 200 Calories Looks Like
I'm loath to turn this blog into another digg link wonder-world but I thought What 200 Calories looks like was pretty cool. (Note: 3500 calories are required to put on one pound of weight)
Calories are weird because they are simply a measure of energy. Colloquially used they refer to how much energy a food contains. Incinerate some carrots and measure how much energy is produced and that is it's caloric value. Ditto for potato salad, etc. Interestingly, just because something has calories (say gasoline or wood) isn't an indication that our body can process that energy. Nonetheless, I've often been curious of the calorie content of some non-edible substances (gasoline has 242,187.5 per oz. and wood has 149,375 per oz. but numbers for fuel sources are easy to come by). For example, how many calories are in my work badge or keyboard.
Calories are weird because they are simply a measure of energy. Colloquially used they refer to how much energy a food contains. Incinerate some carrots and measure how much energy is produced and that is it's caloric value. Ditto for potato salad, etc. Interestingly, just because something has calories (say gasoline or wood) isn't an indication that our body can process that energy. Nonetheless, I've often been curious of the calorie content of some non-edible substances (gasoline has 242,187.5 per oz. and wood has 149,375 per oz. but numbers for fuel sources are easy to come by). For example, how many calories are in my work badge or keyboard.
posted by Yen at
12:48 PM
1 Comments:
What always boggled me was why is it that what is called "calories" on nutritional labels on food are called "kilocalories" anywhere else?
With that in mind, are the statistics you give for nonedibles the small calories or the large calories (one small calorie equals 1000 large calories)?
Also, Wikipedia tells me that food isn't measured in true calories--estimates are made by a table of energy densities, and non-digestible substances are ignored.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie
The Wiki article also goes on about how how much energy it takes to incinerate something depends on the temperature it is at.
Hey if it made me read stuff and say "hey cool" it's a worthy entry even if it does look like a digg link.
By
Stanza, at 5:23 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home