History of the calorie in nutrition
- PMID: 17116702
- DOI: 10.1093/jn/136.12.2957
History of the calorie in nutrition
Abstract
The calorie was not a unit of heat in the original metric system. Some histories state that a defined Calorie (modern kcal) originated with Favre and Silbermann in 1852 or Mayer in 1848. However, Nicholas Clément introduced Calories in lectures on heat engines that were given in Paris between 1819 and 1824. The Calorie was already defined in Bescherelle's 1845 Dictionnaire National. In 1863, the word entered the English language through translation of Ganot's popular French physics text, which defined a Calorie as the heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water from 0 to 1 degrees C. Berthelot distinguished between g- and kg-calories by 1879, and Raymond used the kcal in a discussion of human energy needs in an 1894 medical physiology text. The capitalized Calorie as used to indicate 1 kcal on U.S. food labels derives from Atwater's 1887 article on food energy in Century magazine and Farmers' Bulletin 23 in 1894. Formal recognition began in 1896 when the g-calorie was defined as a secondary unit of energy in the cm-g-s measurement system. The thermal calorie was not fully defined until the 20th century, by which time the nutritional Calorie was embedded in U.S. popular culture and nutritional policy.
Similar articles
-
Hydroids (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) from Mauritanian Coral Mounds.Zootaxa. 2020 Nov 16;4878(3):zootaxa.4878.3.2. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.4878.3.2. Zootaxa. 2020. PMID: 33311142
-
Does the history of food energy units suggest a solution to "Calorie confusion"?Nutr J. 2007 Dec 17;6:44. doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-6-44. Nutr J. 2007. PMID: 18086303 Free PMC article. Review.
-
The foreign policy of the calorie.Am Hist Rev. 2007 Apr;112(2):337-64. doi: 10.1086/ahr.112.2.337. Am Hist Rev. 2007. PMID: 17907347 No abstract available.
-
Atwater and USDA nutrition research and service: a prologue of the past century.J Nutr. 1994 Sep;124(9 Suppl):1718S-1727S. doi: 10.1093/jn/124.suppl_9.1718S. J Nutr. 1994. PMID: 8089739
-
The calorie as the unit of nutritional energy.World Rev Nutr Diet. 1977;(26):1-25. doi: 10.1159/000428533. World Rev Nutr Diet. 1977. PMID: 324139 Review. No abstract available.
Cited by
-
Forgetting how we ate: personalised nutrition and the strategic uses of history.Hist Philos Life Sci. 2024 Mar 7;46(1):14. doi: 10.1007/s40656-024-00613-x. Hist Philos Life Sci. 2024. PMID: 38453802 Free PMC article.
-
Energy homeostasis from Lavoisier to control theory.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2023 Sep 11;378(1885):20220201. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0201. Epub 2023 Jul 24. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2023. PMID: 37482775 Review.
-
A Systematic Review of Technology-Driven Methodologies for Estimation of Energy Intake.IEEE Access. 2019;7:49653-49668. doi: 10.1109/access.2019.2910308. Epub 2019 Apr 11. IEEE Access. 2019. PMID: 32489752 Free PMC article.
-
Perspective: Public Health Nutrition Policies Should Focus on Healthy Eating, Not on Calorie Counting, Even to Decrease Obesity.Adv Nutr. 2019 Jul 1;10(4):549-556. doi: 10.1093/advances/nmz025. Adv Nutr. 2019. PMID: 31305908 Free PMC article.
-
What Should We Eat? Biopolitics, Ethics, and Nutritional Scientism.J Bioeth Inq. 2015 Dec;12(4):587-99. doi: 10.1007/s11673-015-9670-4. Epub 2015 Dec 10. J Bioeth Inq. 2015. PMID: 26659866
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Other Literature Sources
