Understanding Calories: Energy, Nutrition, and Health
Understanding Calories: The Complete article to Energy, Nutrition, and Health Everything you need to know about the units that fuel your body Introduction: What Are Calories? In today's health-conscious world, the word calorie appears everywhere on food labels, in diet plans, on fitness trackers, and in countless conversations about weight management. Yet despite its ubiquity, many people don't fully understand what a calorie actually is, how it works in the body, or why it matters so much to our health and wellbeing. At its most fundamental level, a calorie is simply a unit of energy. More specifically, it's the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. When we talk about food calories (technically called kilocalories or kcal), we're referring to the energy potential locked within the macronutrients proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that make up our diet. This energy is what po...