Whenever you get motivated about your health, you start looking for food articles. That how you can lose weight? How can we tone our bodies? How much food and what type of food should you eat? When you start searching for diets, the standard answer you will get is to eat a certain amount of calories in a day. Then the question arises what a calorie is and how to calculate calorie of the food we eat in a day. In this article, we will go through all the terms and topics that you would need before calculating calories and monitoring your diet.

Let’s start with a series of questions?

What is calorie/kcal?

A kilocalorie (kcal) is the amount of energy required to raise one kg of water temperature by one degree Celsius. 

A car needs petrol as a fuel to run on the road or even cooling down the vehicle; similarly, our body needs the energy to fuel our daily activities. The term calorie and kilo calorie usually used interchangeably. You can use the term calorie as a general term for energy and kcal as a specific energy measurement unit.

What is a carbohydrate?

Carbohydrates are mainly sugar and starches. They breakdown into glucose, and glucose further converted into energy. You might have seen on the food product label that Total carbohydrate divided into more categories like added sugar, fruit sugar, dietary fiber. Added sugar is the sugar that is added to food and beverages when food is prepared or processed. For example, added sugar is present in almost all market products such as juices, baked goods, and breakfast cereals, etc. when you purchase food products. You can also read product labels on how much amount of added sugar present in that product. It primarily tells you about the amount of sucrose present in the food product.

Carbohydrates contribute 4kcal per gram. For example, a product contains 10g Total carbohydrates, then you need to multiply 10 with 4 to get total calories from carbs.

10 X 4 = 40 kcal/calories

What is protein?

Protein is one of the macro nutrients and is composed of one or more chains of amino acids. Protein plays many vital roles in our body. They help in metabolism by providing structural support and also helps in repair the body tissue etc. 

Protein also contributes 4kcal per gram. For example, if the product contains 5g of protein, you can multiply 5 with 4 to get the total calories contribution from fat.

5 X 4 = 20 kcal/calories

What is Fat?

Fat is a subgroup of compounds known as lipids. Lipids include fatty acid, sterols, and triglycerides, etc.

They are the source of stored energy in our bodies. Fat helps in absorbing fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.  

Types of fat:

Saturated Fat

Saturated fat is solid at room temperature. Plant resources of saturated fat are coconut oil, palm oil, and cocoa butter, etc. Animal sources of saturated fat are milk, cheese, and meat, etc.

Unsaturated Fat

They are liquid at room temperature. Unsaturated fat further divided into monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and omega- 3 fatty acids. 

Trans fat

Trans fat is unsaturated fat produced from vegetable oil. They undergo hydrogenation, which increases the shelf life of the product; also, it makes the fat harder at room temperature. It is one of the cheapest fat sources available in the market. Trans fat can increase your cholesterol levels, so always check your food pack that how much trans-fat mentioned in labels. Also, if you have any heart-related issues consult your doctor about how you can control it, which food you need to avoid generally present in snacks such as chips and crackers, cookies, processed food, and salad dressing, etc.

how to calculate calorie for daily fat intake . Fat contributes 9kcal per gram. For example, if the product contains 10g of fat, you can multiply 10 with 9 to get the total calories contribution from fat.

10 X 9 = 90 kcal/calories

How to read food product labels?

We have completed the above exercise now. We can easily calculate the calories of any food product.

Let’s take a look at a label and calculate energy together.

Write down the value in front of three macronutrients:

Total Carbohydrate: 37g

Total Protein: 3g

Total Fat: 8g

Now multiply them with their respective macro nutrient calories.

 Carbohydrate: 37 X 4 = 148 kcal/calories

Protein: 3 X 4 = 12 kcal/calories

Fat: 8 X 9 = 72 kcal/calories

Total Energy = 148 + 12 + 72 =232 kcal

How to calculate calorie intake?

Now let’s see how to calculate calorie intake for a day. We can not calculate our calories accurately at our home, but we can calculate the approximate calories we are eating every day. Also, there are many apps available these days that have an already recorded value of food products. Such as how much calories are present in a bowl of rice or a cup of coffee. You need to add what you have eaten in breakfast lunch, dinner and additional snack it will calculate final calories you have eaten in a day.a

Other essential things need to check on the food label:

Serving Size:

You also have seen that there are two tables in food product labels in some food products.

The reason being we do not eat whole food products in one meal. For example, when you eat your morning cereals, you only take a certain amount in a bowl and then add milk. That certain amount is more or less equal to one serving. Hence, whenever we calculate our meal’s energy, we need to see one serving label, not what is mention for the whole pack.

Sodium Levels:

Always check how much sodium present in one serve if you have any blood pressure issue. Common source of sodium in food product is salt. In general also our body require very small amount of salt.

When you choose between two or three products, you can compare them based on how much sugar, fat, protein, and salt mentioned on their label. Based on your need, you can select your product. For example, if you want to cut down salt in your snack items. Choose a product that contains a lesser amount of sodium. Similarly, if you’re going to cut down sugar from your food product, use a low-added sugar product. It will help you to cut down sugar.

Expiration date:

Always make sure to check the expiry date of the food product. Although the grocery store never stored a food product that is expired but may the product you just purchased is going to expire in 3 days. So it is always better to check the expiry date of food products.

I hope you find all the answers for how to calculate calorie in this article. comment below if you want to know more about any of above topics?