What is a calorie?

- Emma Bryce

We hear about ____ all the time.

How many calories are in this____?

How many are burned by 100 ____, or long distance running, or fidgeting?

But what is a calorie, really, and how many of them do we actually need?

Calories are a way of keeping track of the body's ____.

A healthy balance occurs when we put in about as much energy as we lose.

If we consistently put more energy into our bodies than we ____, the excess will gradually be stored as fat in our
cells, and we'll gain weight.

If we burn off more energy than we ____, we'll lose weight.

So we have to be able to measure the energy we consume and use, and we do so with a unit called the calorie.

One calorie, the kind we measure in food, also called a large calorie, is defined as the amount of energy it would
take to raise the ____ of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.

Everything we consume has a calorie count, a measure of how much energy the item stores in its ____.

The average pizza slice has ____ calories, there are about ____ in a piece of bread, and an apple has about ____.

That energy is released during digestion, and stored in other molecules that can be broken down to provide energy
when the body needs it.

It's used in three ways: about ____ enables digestion, about ____ fuels physical activity, and the biggest chunk,
around ____, supports the basic functions of our organs and tissues.

That third usage corresponds to your basal ____, a number of calories you would need to survive if you weren't
eating or moving around.

Add in some physical activity and ____, and you arrive at the official guidelines for how many calories the average
person requires each day: 2000 for women and 2500 for men.

Those estimates are based on factors like average weight, physical activity and muscle mass.

So does that mean everyone should shoot for around ____ calories?

Not necessarily.

If you're doing an energy ____ activity, like cycling the Tour de France, your body could use up to 9000 calories per
day.

Pregnancy requires slightly more calories than usual, and ____ typically have a slower metabolic rate, energy is
burned more gradually, so less is needed.
Here's something else you should know before you start counting calories.

The calorie counts on ____ measure how much energy the food contains, not how much energy you can actually get
out of it.

Fibrous foods like ____ and whole wheat take more energy to digest, so you'd actually wind up with less energy
from a 100 calorie serving of celery than a 100 calorie serving of potato chips.

Not to mention the fact that some foods offer ____ like protein and vitamins, while others provide far less nutritional
value.

Eating too many of those foods could leave you ____ and ____.

And even with the exact same food, different people might not get the same number of calories.

Variations in things like ____levels, gut bacteria, and even intestine length, means that every individual's ability to
extract energy from food is a little different.

So a calorie is a useful energy measure, but to work out exactly how many of them each of us requires we need to
factor in things like exercise, food type, and our body's ____ to process energy.

Good luck finding all of that on a nutrition label.

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How do carbohydrates impact your health? - Richard J. Wood

Which of these has the least _____?

This roll of _____?

This bowl of _____?

Or this can of _____?

It's a trick question.

Although they may differ in fats, vitamins, and other nutritional content, when it comes to carbs, they're pretty much
the same.

So what exactly does that mean for your diet?

First of all, carbohydrate is the _____ category for sugars and molecules that your body breaks down to make
sugars.
Carbohydrates can be simple or complex depending on their _____.

This is a simple sugar, or monosaccharide.

Glucose, fructose, and galactose are all simple sugars.

Link two of them together, and you've got a _____, lactose, maltose, or sucrose.

Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, have three or more _____ strung together.

Complex carbohydrates with three to ten _____ sugars are oligosaccharides.

Those with more than ten are polysaccharides.

During digestion, your body breaks down those complex carbohydrates into their monosaccharide _____, which
your cells can use for energy.

So when you eat any carbohydrate-rich food, the sugar level in your blood, normally about a _____, goes up.

But your digestive tract doesn't respond to all carbohydrates the same.

Consider starch and fiber, both polysaccharides, both derived from _____, both composed of hundreds to thousands
of monosaccharides joined together, but they're joined together differently, and that changes the effect they have on
your body.

In starches, which plants mostly store for energy in _____ and _____, glucose molecules are joined together by
alpha linkages, most of which can be easily cleaved by enzymes in your digestive tract.

But in fiber, the bonds between monosaccharide _____ are beta bonds, which your body can't break down.

Fiber can also trap some starches, preventing them from being cleaved, resulting in something called _____ starch.

So foods high in starch, like crackers and white bread, are digested easily, quickly releasing a whole bunch of
glucose into your _____, exactly what would happen if you drank something high in glucose, like soda.

These foods have a high glycemic index, the amount that a particular food raises the sugar level in your blood.

Soda and white bread have a similar glycemic index because they have a similar effect on your blood sugar.

But when you eat foods high in _____, like vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, those indigestible beta bonds slow
the release of glucose into the blood.

Those foods have a lower glycemic index, and foods like _____, cheese, and meats have the lowest glycemic index.

When sugar moves from the _____ tract to the blood stream, your body kicks into action to transfer it into your
_____ where it can be processed and used for energy.

Insulin, a hormone synthesized in the pancreas, is one of the body's main tools for sugar management.

When you eat and your blood sugar rises, insulin is secreted into the blood.
It prompts your _____ and fat cells to let glucose in and jump starts the conversion of sugar to energy.

The degree to which a unit of _____ lowers the blood sugar elps us understand something called insulin sensitivity.

The more a given unit of insulin lowers blood sugar, the more sensitive you are to insulin.

If insulin sensitivity goes down, that's known as insulin _____.

The pancreas still sends out insulin, but cells, especially muscle cells, are less and less responsive to it, so blood
sugar fails to decrease, and blood insulin continues to rise.

Chronically consuming a lot of carbohydrates may lead to insulin resistance, and many _____ believe that insulin
resistance leads to a serious condition called metabolic syndrome.

That involves a constellation of symptoms, including high blood sugar, increased waist _____, and high blood
pressure.

It increases the risk of developing conditions, like _____ disease and type II diabetes.

And its prevalence is rapidly increasing all over the world.

As much as 32% of the population in the U.S. has metabolic _____.

So let's get back to your diet.

Whether your food tastes sweet or not, sugar is sugar, and too many carbs can be a problem.

So maybe you'll want to take a pass on that pasta sushi roll pita burrito donut burger sandwich.