On 2009/07/18, at 10:22 AM, John M. Steele wrote:
I don't know who Lulu is, but in her defense, her calorie is closer
to a calorie than many calories are.
Dear John,
Here is a little background to Lulu Hunt-Peters in the context of
energy measurements. In this context it is interesting to note that Dr
Lulu Hunt-Peters has been highly successful at changing the world of
food measurement to her idiosyncratic and unscientific measuring word
at the same time as the entire world of metrology has clearly failed
to promote their point of view. Dr Hunt-Peters did not have government
support, she did not have the support of the scientific community, nor
did she did not have any legal precedence. Basically, all she had was
the ability to write for women's magazines, and with that talent she
changed the entire world of measuring the energy in food.
Think about the competition between the internationally recognised
metric unit for food energy, kilojoule, and some of the other common
measuring words such as, calories, Calories, gram calories,
kilocalories, or kilogram calories. Dr Hunt-Peters succeeded while the
world of scientific metrology failed!
You can find an outline of Lulu Hunt Peters life at http://calorielab.com/news/2005/09/16/lulu-hunt-peters-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-diet-book/
and a copy of her main book from http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15069
Here is a summary of the history of food energy.
There has been only one official metric unit for measuring food energy
since 1889 — kilojoules. For example, a slice of bread contains about
250 kilojoules of food energy and a sweet biscuit has about 500
kilojoules of food energy. The kilojoule had been accepted as the sole
unit for energy internationally since 1889.
However in 1918, 29 years after the establishment of the kilojoule as
an international standard unit for measuring the energy in food, Dr
Lulu Hunt Peters popularised an alternative word, 'calorie', to
describe food energy in the USA. However, she avoided defining the
concept of food energy by writing,
'… hereafter you are going to eat calories of food. Instead of saying
one slice of bread, or a piece of pie, you will say 100 calories of
bread, 350 calories of pie.'
Food energy and measuring have been profoundly muddled ever since the
publication of the book, Diet and Health in 1918.
As a child, Lulu Hunt Peters was aware of her problem with body mass
when she wrote, '… that there is genuine mental suffering in being an
obese child.' She knew this from her own experience as a child and, as
an adult, she reached a body mass of 100 kilograms when the body mass
of an average woman was close to 65 kg.
Dr Hunt Peters defined a calorie as the amount of heat needed to heat
4 pounds of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit. She based her definition on
the German research into dog digestion done by W. O. Atwater who was
investigating the best way to use dog droppings for tanning leather.
Many attempts were made later to define the word, calorie, in metric
terms. For example, the size of a calorie depends on the temperature
at which it is defined; technically on a scale of 32 to 212 degrees
Fahrenheit there are 180 possible definitions for the word, calorie.
But this only led to more confusion as different groups then devise
different definitions for the different ways that a calorie might be
spelled; one example is that a Calorie (with an upper case C) is 1000
times larger than a calorie (with a lower case c). This is why we
have: calories, Calories, gram calories, kilocalories, kilogram
calories, and perhaps 20 or 30 other spelling varieties with
potentially different values. Like other old pre-metric measures there
are now far too many different calories (or Calories or kilocalories)
that have many different names and varying values.
The existence of these seemingly good choices (kilojoule accurate, the
others popular) means that the debate between them will continue for
many generations, with nutritionists and dieticians dithering between
them. To a measurement specialist there is only one choice, the
kilojoule, but I suspect that women's and diet magazines will continue
dithering. You can only avoid dithering by adopting a definite
measurement policy for yourself or the group that you represent.
When you write: 'her calorie is closer to a calorie than many calories
are' you are accepting the definition of one group, in one place, who
have defined the word calorie according to their own requirements. To
the best of my knowledge, no international authority has been able to
define a 'universal calorie. For example, BIPM (at http://www1.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter4/table10.html
) simply notes that a number of different calories have been used in
the past, they write:
i) Several "calories" have been in use:
a calorie labelled "at 15 °C": 1 cal15 = 4.1855 J (value adopted by
the CIPM in 1950; PV, 1950, 22, 79-80);
a calorie labelled "IT" (International Table): 1 calIT = 4.1868 J (5th
International Conference on the Properties of Steam, London, 1956);
a calorie labelled "thermochemical": 1 calth = 4.184 J.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the forthcoming book, Metrication Leaders Guide.
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
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