Today's interesting fact has to do with the calorie.

When asked, a lot of people don't know what a calorie is.

A calorie is a unit of energy.

It is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree C, or around 4.2 joules of energy.

This calorie is sometimes called the small calorie or the gram calorie.

In most 'scientific' applications, the joule is now used instead.

The calorie is mostly used now as a unit of food energy.

To make things confusing for dieters, there is also the Calorie, sometimes called the Large Calorie, Kilogram calorie, the kilocalorie, Dietary calorie or food calorie.

The Calorie (always denoted with an uppercase or capital C) is the energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree C.

Calories in food is determined by calculations, developed by Wilbur Olin Atwater and associated in the 19th Century, where they compared the energy produce by burning and estimating how much energy is used after the foodstuff passed through an alimentary canal.

We have learnt recently that the number of calories that can be removed from food increases with the amount of processing a foodstuff receives.

This sadly means that the calories listed on many food packets can incorrect, by as much as 25% and those of us who diet, must keep this in mind when calculating how many calories we are consuming.