What are calories? Is it the amount if energy in a food? How does the body uses calories, burns calories, and how does excess calories becomes fat?
Why are food “low in calories” good for you? Why are food of the same size, have different amount if calories?
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Food has two purposes: First, it supplies your body with fuel, to give energy to, e.g., your muscles, your brain, and everything else that does work. And second, it provides building material, so that your body can assemble new cells or repair things in or between cells.
The fuel part, you can imagine very much like gas for a car. It’s something that can be burned to give power. And “calorie” is just a unit of energy. For example, 1 kWh (the unit you know from your electricity bill) is 860 kcal (calories), and 1 litre of gasoline gives your car 8.7 kWh or 7500 kcal. And it’s no coincidence that one litre of cooking oil gives your body about the same (8000 kcal, if you’d actually drink it in one go.)
So, nothing wrong with calories. However:
*Most* of the calories from food that your body cannot use, it will store as fat. If you are an average male with an office job, your body needs about 2000 kcal per day. If you eat more, say, 3000 kcal, the food with the left-over 1000 kcal will be transformed into fat — and you gain about 110 grams of body fat every day.
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