Precision Nutrition System

Precision Nutrition System
Healthy Eating For Fat Loss

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

How many calories in my food?

The amount of calories in a gram of food depend on what type of food you are eating. All food can be broken down to three forms:
1 - Fat
2 - Carbohydrates
3 – Protein

All food is made from one or a combination of these energy sources. Each energy source contains different amounts of calories and are as follows:

Food Source Calories Kilojoules
Protein 4 16.7
Fat 9 37.7
Carbohydrate 4 16.7


As you can see each gram of fat you consume provides more than twice as many calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate. That is part of the reason there has been a trend towards fat free products. But be careful, a fat free product is not always a good choice, it still has calories. Candy in now promoted as fat free. It is but the deception is that it contains sugar and lots of it. Sugar is a carbohydrate and contains calories. Calories are the main concern not the amount of fat.

Here is an example of how these numbers are used:
A large order of french fries - 6 oz or 171 g contains:
6 grams of protein

25 grams of fat
70 grams of carbohydrates

That would total 529 calories for one order of large fries at a popular fast food chain.

(6 g protein x 4) + (25 g fat x 9) + (70 g carbs x 4) = 529

In this order of fries 24 calories come from protein; 225 calories come from fat; and 280 calories come from carbohydrates.

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