Jennele Morris, age 11, of Nogales, Arizona, for her question:
Do all the calories we eat become fat?
There are calories in every mouthful of food you eat but thank goodness all of them do not add lumpy layers of fat to the body. If this were so, you would gain pounda and pounds every day. What's more, your body would give up many of its duties and become too lazy to move.
Lots of young persons have to face the weighty problem of fat. They are introduced to the word calories and learn that calories cause every ounce of surplus weight and every lump of unwanted fat. Calories seem to be the culprits of all our weighty woes. Nothing, . of courses,, could be farther from the truth, The truth begins with as understanding of shat a calorie really is.
The calorie is a, measure of heat energy, no more and no less. We sired to keep comfortably warm and, goodness knows, we need lots of energy to enjoy life. The body also needs boundless energy to operate the countless chemical miracles that go on secretly in its busy cells. All this energy comes from our food. The body can get a certain number of calories from every bite we eat. Some foods yield more calories than others and the calorie value on every item of diet can be estimated.
The food you eat supplies the body with enough calories to perform its daily duties. A certain number of calories are used up every day. A girl of 11 needs to eat about 2,500 calories worth of food every day. An active boy of 11 needs about 200 more. An average man needs about 3,000 daily calories, about 500 more than a woman. More calories are used up when you exercise and a hard working man may requires 3,500 daily calories.
If a person's food contains the proper quota of calories every day, none of the food . is turned to fat. If we eat more than our quota, the body changes the surplus into fatty t globules and stores them in the muscles and other soft tissues.
The diet calorie is the amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of a pint of water about four degrees Fahrenheit. The body works hard to extract about 100 calories from an apple. The elaborate digestive system transforms every bite we eat beyond recognition. The assorted molecules are sifted and remade into usable chemicals. The unwanted materials are sent to the body's waste disposal system.
The energy for all this work is provided by the chemical process of oxidation. The oxygen we breathe is used to release heat energy from the food we eat. Oxidation is a kind of slow and gentle burning process. The heat energy it yields is figured in calorie units. The energy is used to build food molecules into new cells, to keep the body warm, to move muscles, digest more food and a million other operations. If the body's owner supplies food with more calories than are needed for the daily chores, the surplus material is stored as surplus fat.
We all know, or we should know, the list of items on a balanced diet. The right quota of calories is supplied by sensible helpings of seven vital foods. The meaty proteins are the body builders and most of them are low in calories. Oils and butter are vital foods, but each helping yields lots of calories. Starches and sugars yield lots of energy but surplus helpings of these carbohydrates are easily converted into layers of fat.