Term:kalories

Why spell kalories with a k?

A kalorie is a food calorie. The 'k' is to prevent confusion with an older historical unit "calorie", which is 1000 times smaller.

When someone says "An apple has 95 calories", technically the "proper" wording would be "An apple has 95 kilocalories". But that could easily confuse people more, as "95 kilocalories" sounds like enough food for a hundred meals! So a better solution is to say "An apple has 95 kalories" - the "kilo" is implied with the "k", but it's still pronounced the same as "calorie". Side note: another notation is to use capitalization: "Calorie" as the big unit (food kalorie), and "calorie" as the small (historical) one. But that notation is too easily lost in document formatting. So use a K instead.