Commonly, when you see diet plans laid out, the intake of the various macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat) is presented in terms of percentages of total caloric intake. So you might see a diet which was 60% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 10% fat or some other set of percentages. Or you’ll see recommendations that ‘…athletes only need 15% of their calories from protein.’ or ‘don’t eat more than 30% of your total calories from fat’, that sort of thing.
In this article, I want to teach readers what these percentages mean and how to use them (if you so desire) either analyze a given diet, set up a diet, or figure out what a food label means.
A Quick Recap on Calories
In a previous chapter I gave you the caloric content of the various macronutrients. To save you needless paging, I’ll review them here.
- Protein: 4 calories/gram
- Carbohydrate: 4 calories/gram
- Fat: 9 calories/gram
- Alcohol: 7 calories per gram
Calculating Diet Percentages
With the above values in hand, and using some basic math, we can do several different operations in terms of diet and food analysis.… Keep Reading