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.

Most scientific reports instead say "kilocalorie" or "kcal", which is technically correct, but could easily confuse people in other ways. So we prefer "kalorie", which is pronounced the same as "calorie", but spelled with a pedantic 'k' for 'kilo'.

The 'k' is only needed when specifying numbers (i.e. "An apple has 95 kalories." or "This diet is 2400 kalories/day."). The 'k' is not needed for general comparisons (i.e. "Most of the calories in these chips come from fat.").