Eli5: How can edible items have 0 calories in them while still contain nutritional items like carbs (sugars and other sweeteners), vitamins, and amino acids (BCAAs etc.)?

Question

Eli5: How can edible items have 0 calories in them while still contain nutritional items like carbs (sugars and other sweeteners), vitamins, and amino acids (BCAAs etc.)?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

This also has to do with a conversion “glitch” and the United States’ relative reluctance to adopt the metric system. In US food labels, there’s a technical distinction between little-c calories and big-C Calories. What we see in FDA nutritional labels are big-C Calories, which are technically **Kilo**calories. Since the US is always weird about the metric system, they decided to just avoid that Kilo altogether and make it even more confusing.

So, combine that with fast-and-loose rounding and you get 0 big-C Calories =< 999 little-c calories.

>What is the difference between calories and kilocalories?

> The “calorie” we refer to in food is actually kilocalorie. One (1) kilocalorie is the same as one (1) Calorie (upper case C). A kilocalorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water one degree Celsius.

https://www.nutrition.gov/expert-q-a#:~:text=The%20%22calorie%22%20we%20refer%20to,of%20water%20one%20degree%20Celsius.