Kilojoules are NOT the same as kilocalories

This is embarrassing.

I’ve been enjoying a lot of new foods since I’ve been here, but out of curiosity (and a need to be a little calorie-conscious since I’m not running), I try to check out the labels on foods, when they are available (they’re not always). The vitamin and minerals are especially confusing, they don’t use the USDA daily values here, so I’ll often seen an amount of calcium or Vitamin B but have no idea what the amount means – 6%? 100% No idea.

Anyhow, I was surprised that many of the food items I was enjoying had many fewer calories than I expected. I assumed it was because there was less sugar and sweeteners than we typically have for food in the states. I was wrong. Maybe that’s true for some foods, but I realized I was equating kilojoules with kilocalories, but there the number didn’t make sense, for some reason, I was dividing by ten. Why, I’m not sure. I realized my mistake when I was adding milk to my tea – there was no way a full cup of 2% milk had 40 calories. To figure out calories from kilojoules, you divide by four, not ten. Whoops.