how are we able to calculate the calories in food?
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It’s called a bomb calorimeter. They take a very well insulated bath of known mass of water at a known temperature – with very precise instruments.
Then they burn a known small quantity of food in a chamber completely submerged in the insulated water bath.
The heat has nowhere to go but out…through the water. So they measure the temperature rise of the water and calculate how much energy the food has released based on that.
For example one BTU (British Thermal Unit) will cause one pound of water to rise by one degree F. One calorie will cause one gram of water to rise by one degree C. (Food calories are called “calories”, but are actually kilo-calories.)
They do this with basic ingredients, flour, different fats, different proteins, etc. and then use this data to calculate the content of more complex foods – using the recipe….meaning: they don’t use a bomb calorimeter to test a bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich. They already know the calorie content from the individual ingredients, so they add them in the correct proportion based on the recipe.
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