Is a Calorie a Calorie? Processed Food, Experiment Gone Wrong
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Calorific content of food is measured by burning it, heating water and measuring the temperature change of the water.
It takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade.
But the body is not 100% efficient at converting that food into energy.
Berkley's Edible Education programme has been banging on about this stuff for 1 years. Some very interesting lectures in this series
https://food.berkeley.edu/programs/community-engagement-edu/edible-education/
And our body doesn't just convert food into energy.
Yes, that's true. I was only thinking about the calorific process when I was writing that.
Cellulose Fibre is a good example of an energy source during burning that is not digested.
I think (using just intuition) that the other nutritional content is a very small fraction of the calories of foodstuffs.