How Do Food Manufacturers Calculate The Calorie Count Of Packaged Foods?

    • Dheeraj.Jangra@timesgroup.com
    • Publish Date: May 27 2016 3:03PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: May 27 2016 3:03PM
How Do Food Manufacturers Calculate The Calorie Count Of Packaged Foods?

To help you understand the subject better, let us tell you what a calorie is. A calorie can be defined as a unit that is used to measure energy. Specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy, or heat, required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. In earlier days, the number of calories in a given food item directly measured the energy it produced. To calculate the calorie count  at that time, the food was placed in a sealed container surrounded by water, which was known as a bomb calorimeter. The food was completely burned and the resulting rise in water temperature was measured. However, this method is not used any longer.

Today, the calorie count put on a packaged food item is calculated by adding up the calories provided by its nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates and fats. This is done by using the Atwater system developed by US chemist Wilbur Olin Atwater more than a century ago. In this system, calories are not determined by burning the foods. During the late 19th century Atwater conducted a series of experiments and concluded that proteins and carbohydrates have about 4 calories per gm, fats have 9 calories per gm, while alcohol has 7 calories per gm. Which implies that an energy bar that has, say, 10 gm of protein, 20 gm of carbohydrate and 9 gm of fat will have 201 calories.

Manufacturers use this simple formula to calculate the calorie count in food items today. However, experts now want modifications in Atwater’s system as it does not take into consideration preparation and processing techniques that can create a difference in the number of calories we ultimately consume after buying eatables from the market.

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Comments

dev Children''s Academy, Ashok Nagar, Kandivli East

I always used to wonder how people counted calories.now I know

Ronit.R National Hill View Public School

WONDERFUL TOPIC TO TOUCH ON. THANK YOU TOI

Neha Varadharajan The Orbis School

Useful for students!

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