Sentence:  Mostly, the microbiome is beneficial. It helps with digestion and enables people to extract a lot more <WSD>calories</WSD> from their food than would otherwise be possible. Research over the past few years, however, has implicated it in diseases from atherosclerosis to asthma to autism. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Kilogram calorie or large calorie. A unit of energy 1000 times larger than the gram calorie. It is equivalent to the gram kilocalorie, approximately 4.2 kilojoules.