Polk County news. [volume] (Benton, Tenn.) 191?-1983, 1920-01-01
WHAT DOES A CAL
OPIE MEAN TO YOU?

a family consisting Of father
mother. and three children requires
about a hundred and twenty 100
calorie portions fs,Gu adequate daily
diet"
How much would that have meant
to the average hou>ekceper ten years
agog She probably could not have
told whether cIlories were ISLANDS n
canned goods" as Mr.. Dooley said Of
the Philippines Lately, however, say
the authorities in charge Of this work
in the U. 5. Department of Asricul-
ture, calOries have been taken and
written about so much that the house
wife at least has a vague notion that
they are in some way connected With
the value of food to the body and that
the more calories she can provide fnI
her family, the better it will be nOur
ished. The L. S. Department of Agri
culture has recently published some Ia
bles which make it easier for her TO
"cOunt the calOries" as we'll as the cost
of the food she buys. She can use
such tables without knowing anything
more about calories. just as she can
use electric light without understand |
ing the kilOwatt hours that appear in
the monthly bill; but calories are
neither so mysterious nor so compli-
Gated that she can not easily under.
stand what they are.
The word calorie comes from
"calor," a word meaning heated. A
calorie is a unit for measuring guam
titles of heat just as a yard is unit
for measuring length or a pound for
weight. Roughly, a calorie equals the
of heat required to raise the
of pound Of water de
grees Fahrenheit.
But this is not the whole story.
What we call heat and what we call
energy are really different forms of ,
The same force. The l+eat of the sum-
he strength of the winds, the warmth l
rom the fire, the pressure of the eX-
banding steam or exploding gas in the
'ngine. even the flowing of sap in the
liant and the contraction of the mus ( q
les in our bodieS-all these are due to ?,
he same universal energy showing it
elf in different ways. Coal is made
p of substances held together by this
anne energy, and so is gasoline or any
Their kind of fuel When the fuel is L
urned, the energy is set free in the II
orm of heat which in its turn may be- 6,
ONE the force that drives the ma
hine In this last form we call II
lechanical energy, and we know that
given amount of heat will yield an
qulyalent amount of mechanical ener
Y. Thus our calOrie may represent IL
ther enough heat to raise the TEN
erature of ono pound of water de
rees f. or enough mechanical force to
TT one ton about one foot and nalf. ST
Now, food is fuel for our bodies and TIL
lergy stored in it can be released in
e body and used for keeping it warm
for the work Of the muscles, much
e way as gasoline is released and nj
'ed when the gas is consumed in the -;
otOr The more we exercise our -
uscles tie more mechanical energy le'
e release and the more must be pro,
ded by our food fuel. In order to
axe sure that we are stocking our
dy engine rightly, we must be able an
say both how much energy our food
alds (called its fuel or energy value)
/ how much energy our bodies use. SD,
is is where the calOries come in,
we can measure both food energy 80
body energy in calories. VII
Choosing Cheap Fuel -
'ody-fuel, like other kinds of fuel,
Is money, and the problem is to get LllNIl
amount needed for the smallest /.
a possible, which means choosing
d rather carefully. A man running :
awmill in the cypress swamps of =
lisiana or the Michigan woods 8
lid have to pay a lot of money for Z
ugh anthracite coal to run his 8
I'M engine, but he can take his fuel i
n the sawdust heap and the slab =
and so save money. 2
Luch the same situation exists with =
lrd to the fuel for the human en- q
!. If our family of five bought its =
100calorie portions all in siroin =
k at % cents a pound, the cost =
Id be sc day. If it bought them =
N white potatoes at $50 a hushel, =
cost would be only S1,20 a day. g