Today I went to every store I could think of to try to buy some calories. Not a single store had any for sale. I couldn't even buy one of them. Very unusual for how people talk about them so much! You'd think there would be a big calorie section in every store.

Ya, I know, get back to your juicing or whatever else you do that makes you like that!

elnatural

Did you check the frozen section? I here there's lots of calories in there. Or maybe you can buy them online

How do we measure calories in raw foods? Isn't a calorie a unit of heat? If we don't heat the food there is no calorie formed.

Hi Mike

Mike, I think you're onto something here. I just put a thermometer in my salad and it didn't read anything at all. A habenero pepper didn't register either. Thanks for your sciecne mindedness on this subject. Your next ebook- Calorie Counting/ A Lot of HOT AIR ?

elnatural

Hmmm. Politicians must absorb them, they give off a lot when they speak, you can see the heat waves coming off all the hot air. Maybe they've absorbed all the US calories, what d'ya think?

love this board..

Ah, calories.

1Kcal (=1000 calories) is the amount of heat/energy it takes to burn off one (K=1000) calorie. It is a measure of the metabolic rate. For example,

If you run for .5 hours, you'll burn a bunch of calories (Kcals). So, to burn off the apple you just ate, you'll need to run for x amount of minutes to burn of those 90 calories (Kcal) of apple. How? You just increased your metabolisim (made your body work).

Thanks,

Arilraw

Come on you guys, except for Arilraw, who is on the right track. You might not believe in kcals but they certainly believe in you. Why so much reveling in scientific and technical illiteracy? You use computers, refrigerators, etc. You embrace the fruits of the scientific method in other aspects of your lives but you reject them when it comes to food? The same physical laws apply. Don't be hypocritical.

A calorie (colloquial for kcal) is by definition a unit of heat.

There are ways to measure calorie contents of foods without using overt heat sources or temperature measurement but they are roundabout. If you wish to learn more, you could take a physical chemistry class.

Or: learn about basal metabolic rates and devise experiments to see how much your experimental animal (rodent, human, dog, etc) gains or loses weight when given a particular amount of foodstuffs.

More directly, you could use a bomb calorimeter, which measures how much the water temperature rises when you burn a food in it. A themometer is a necessary but insufficient part of the instrumentation. You also need an ignition source, insulation, etc. By itself, a thermometer doesn't tell you much.

To the serious ones, I think this was a bit of a joke! But get it right, a calorie is a unit of Energy, not heat. See [en.wikipedia.org]

--
Rob Hull - Funky Raw
My blog: [www.rawrob.com]

Rob
Correct a realy big joke. I'm in the land of euphoria and much joking around happens there.

Heat and energy are the same thing. When we say something feels hot to the touch what we are realy discribing is how fast the molecules are moving in the substance. The more the energy, the faster the movement and the greater the feeling of what we call heat. Heat describes how fast molecules are moving due to thier energy state.

elnatural

Calories measure heat: a calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 g of water 1 degree C.

In the SI system, joules are used to measure energy more generally (or ergs), without regards to a specific form of energy.

But, it is true, the Joule is gradually overtaking the use of the word calorie and recently I have noticed that it is often used exlusively in the nutrition lit.

I have wondered about calorie's for a long time. How does our body heat up.

i am say 180 lbs. 81kg or 81,000 grams.
i work out and heat up say 1 deg.
we are 60% water
[ga.water.usgs.gov]

so heat 48,600 grams of water 1 deg.
as you say
"a calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 g of water 1 degree C."

this morning i did stairclimer for 20 min.
if i heated up 1 deg i used 48,600 calories. which i didnt as i was warmer than than plus did the work. Is not our diet say 3000 calories a day?

i can not figure out where it "the energy" comes from. What is wrong with my calulations? i have wondered about this for years. any ideas.

Two things:

1. the nonwater part of your body might be insulating and resist internal temperature changes.

2. calorie is the colloquial use of kcal, or 1000 calories. A very bad and confusing use, if you ask me.

I think we need another measure of energy, one that takes joy and playfulness-life- into account. What would we call it, not a calorie but maybe a pixie, a pearl, a sunburst? The light one gives off when happy, healthy, whole, and which does not dissipate but increases as it radiates.