In fast and technological times, we often forget some of the most important aspects of living. A great example of that is healthy eating. We are not strange to things like fast-food chains that serve you a plate full of fat and drinks that contain twelve spoonfuls of sugar. For you to be healthy, there are foods you have to consume and some you should avoid. It would help if you considered what you eat and how many calories you consume for a healthy diet. Of course, modern food conglomerates are trying to confuse you by putting complex words and tables on the back of the packaging. To get some valuable info from caloric tables on the packaging, you can use our trusty Grams to Calories Calculator.

Also, check our other health-related calculators like Estimated Average Glucose Calculator or Heart Score Calculator. There is also a conversion category on our site where you can do various conversions, such as PPM to mg/L converter, or many others.

Take a look other related calculators, such as:

What are grams and calories

Gram is a weight unit in the standard measuring system. Gram unit is derived from primary weight unit kilogram, and there is one-thousand grams in one kilogram. Calories are units of energy defined as the energy needed to raise the temperature of pure water by one degree Celsius or Kelvin. A calorie is often used when describing the nutritional value of food. When we talk about food, the term calorie refers to a unit of kilocalorie, so have that in mind when we mention calories in the rest of this article. The symbol for this unit is kcal. The nutritional value of food products is often written somewhere on the back of the packaging.

Grams to calories conversion – formula

The formula for converting grams to calories depends on what substance we are talking about. A certain mass of any substance contains a certain number of calories, so converting from grams to calories is just the simple case of multiplication. For example, fat is one of the most energy-dense sources, and one gram of fat contains nine calories. In that case, we can use the formula to convert from gram to calorie:

Calories=Grams \times 9

How to convert from grams to calories?

If you look at the back of the pack of chips, for example, you will see its ingredients. You will also see the percentage of the mass of various macronutrients – fats, carbohydrates, proteins. If you take those numbers, multiply them with appropriate coefficients, and then sum everything up, you will get the number of total calories.

To convert from gram of carbohydrate to calorie, use the formula:

Calories=Grams \times 4

To convert from grams of fats to calories, use the formula:

Calories = Grams \times 9

For converting from grams of protein to calories, use the formula:

Calories =Grams \times 4

Conversion table

Like we have just seen, one gram of proteins, fats, or carbohydrates contains certain number of calories.

SubstanceNumber of calories per gram
Fat9
Protein4
Carbohydrates4

With this, we can plug in values from the table into the formula:

Calories=Grams \times Calories \; per\; gram

to convert the certain mass of our nutrient to the number of calories.

Calories in nutrients

Nutrients are substances that a living organism must consume to survive, grow and reproduce. They include things like ethanol, proteins, etc. Nutrients can be divided into two categories:

  • Macronutrients (water, fats, etc.) are necessary for energy and tissue repair.
  • Micronutrients are needed in much smaller quantities and play a role in functions like nerve conduction

According to official World Health Organization guidelines, the person must consume a certain amount of nutrients for the human body to function normally. The three most important macronutrients that provide energy are:

  1. Proteins
  2. Fats
  3. Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the type of macronutrients found in foods. They include sugars, starches, and fibers. Your body processes them and breaks them into glucose and sugar that your blood absorbs. It’s important to keep your blood sugar level in check, so the WHO regulations recommend dietary rules for carbohydrates consumption.

Proteins

Scientifically speaking, proteins are nutrients made up of amino acids. Their function in your body is tissue and cell growth. Many proteins in our body constantly get used and replaced. There is a great number of proteins in both meat and plant-based foods.

Fats

Fat is a macronutrient that gives you energy and helps your body absorb vitamins. However, there are different types of fats, and not all of them are equally beneficial:

  • Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and are considered healthy. They can be found in various vegetable oils( canola, sunflower), nuts and seeds( pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts), fish.
  • Saturated fats are the bad fats found in many fast foods, high-fat dairy desserts, and meat products. WHO recommends them in smaller amounts because they can cause health problems like heart failure.
  • Trans fats are fats that are the most harmful. They are produced through artificial processes. We can reheat them multiple times, which makes them perfect for fast food restaurants and snack manufacturers

Alcohol

Though technically a nutrient, alcohol doesn’t play an essential role as other essential nutrients. Alcohol contains a lot of “empty calories.” The body can’t absorb these calories and turns them into sugar instead. Furthermore, they disable our body incapable of absorbing some of the essential nutrients. That is why most good athletes don’t consume alcohol.

How to use Grams to Calories Calculator?

When you open our app, enter “Grams to calories calculatorin the search field.If you open this calculator, the app will present you with input fields for entering weight of appropriate macronutrients. For example, in the field named “Alcohol” you will see three options: “I haven’t drunk any alcohol,” “I don’t know how many grams I drank,” “I know how many grams I drank .

If you enter all the appropriate values, you will get your result in the next four fields (if you chose the second or third option in the previous field, there would be five fields). Our tool will calculate the caloric value of every nutrient you entered and you will get the information of the total calories in your portion there.

Practical example

For example, let’s look at the image of weights of some macronutrients in the generic bag of potato chips:

Grams to calories - practical example

Now, take our Grams to Calories calculator and enter “Total Fat,” “Total Carbohydrates,” and “Protein” into appropriate fields. For the sake of example, let’s imagine we drank one standard American bottle of beer, which has 14 grams of pure alcohol. So choose “I know how many grams I drank” and enter 14. In the results fields, you will see the following:

Calories\;from\;carbs=60\;kcal\newline Calories\;from\;protein=8\; kcal\newline Calories\;from\;fat=90\;kcal\newline Calories\;from\;alcohol=98\;kcal\newline Total\;Calories=256\;kcal

By the way, our calculator can even work with units like joules and pounds.

FAQ

What is a calorie?

A calorie is a measure of energy in the International Measuring System. So when we are talking about food calories, we are talking about units of kilocalories in the measuring system.

What is kcal?

One energy kilocalorie (kcal) in the Standard system is 1000 energy calories. Therefore, one food calorie (Cal with capital c) is equivalent to one energy kilocalorie.

How many kcal in a cal?

There is exactly 0.001 kcal in cal, and there is 1000 cal in 1 kcal.

How many calories in a teaspoon of sugar?

In the standard teaspoon of white sugar, there is 96 kcal.

How many grams are in one calorie?

It depends on which substance we are talking about. For example, there are four calories in one gram of pure carbohydrates or proteins, which means 0.25 grams in one calorie.

What percentage of calories should come from protein?

About 10 to 30 percent of your daily calories should come from protein for a typical person.