A calorie is a unit of measure of energy right? But you can release different amounts of energy depending on the chemical reaction you use.
Well the chemical reaction they use to measure energy in macronutrients is not the same chemical reaction that is used by the human body, they burn it instead. Now for most macronutrients this doesn't matter because the amount of calories released by the human body is pretty close to the amount released by burning.
But this isn't true of ethanol which is very efficiently burned, but very inefficiently consumed by the human body. So the 7 Cal/gram is very misleading.
A calorie is a unit of measure of energy right? But you can release different amounts of energy depending on the chemical reaction you use.
Well the chemical reaction they use to measure energy in macronutrients is not the same chemical reaction that is used by the human body, they burn it instead. Now for most macronutrients this doesn't matter because the amount of calories released by the human body is pretty close to the amount released by burning.
But this isn't true of ethanol which is very efficiently burned, but very inefficiently consumed by the human body. So the 7 Cal/gram is very misleading.