Calorie or calorie?

This has been on my mind for a while.

It might have escaped your notice that the word calories is sometimes capitalized and sometimes not.

Why is this?

First you need to know that calories are a unit for measuring energy.

Scientists prefer to use joules, but calories have become the convention for nutrition.

A calorie (lower case) is the amount of energy needed to raise one gram of water by one degree Celsius.

A Calorie (upper case) is one thousand calories. Or one kilocalorie (kcal).

The Calories listed on nutrition labels are big C Calories. I'm guessing this is because it saves us writing a whole lot of zeros.

It doesn't really matter for our purposes, as most people will never have to use such a small unit of measure as a small c calorie.

But I wanted you to know anyway.

Sound smart at lunch tomorrow.

Want more, do more, BE more,

~Luke