Calories are units of energy. They were basically created for people to know how much energy are they really obtaining from the food they are ingesting.
The daily average requirement of calories an average human has is around 2.200 and 2700 Kcal. Men Usually need to ingest 2700 while women 2200 to fullfill their daily needs. This is not an exact number as it may vary due to many factors like: height, age, exercise, workload, etc.
Did you know reading burns around 35 to 50 calories every 30 minutes?
Another important fact we should understand about calories is that they may come in different forms, so counting calories as a way of avoiding bad health habits is not that good of a choice, I will explain you why:
Calories can come in the form of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and alcohol, yes you heard right, alcohol.
1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories.
1 gram of protien contains 4 calories.
1 gram of fat contains 9 calories.
1 gram of alcohol contains 7 calories.
http://www.dining.ucla.edu/housing_site/dining/SNAC_pdf/CaloriesCount.pdf
So calories are not always good as they are not always bad, the sure thing is that they are always needes as we need calories in order to survive.
Other thing we should have in mind is empty calories. What is empty calories?
What we usually call empty calories are foods that have a lot of bad fats and sugars, generally highly processed foods but which the amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins, fiber and good fats they deliver to us are in really low quantitie.
An example of this can be the average soda, this one will call it X soda. The X soda contains:
230 Calories.
50 mg of sodium.
62 grams of Carbohydrates which 56 of them are in the form of Sugar.
0 grams of Protein
No vitamins or minerals.
We should better choose foods highly dense in nutrients as are: fruits, vegetables, lean meats, dairy products and more.
I will let you know more about it n my next post. Hope you enjeoyed it, I would love to hear your comments.