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The term, "Calorie" goes back to 1824, when it was used as a measure of energy. Since then, it's been replaced in most scientific usage with the joule. However, in Nutrition, it lives on -- kinda. Let me explain:
The original "calorie" (note the lower-case "c") was roughly the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree C. For Nutrition, this is a tiny amount of energy -- so small it's nearly useless. So when people talked energy and Nutrition, they started using the Calorie (note the upper-case "C"), which was meant to refer to the amount of energy required to raise 1 kilogram of water by 1C degree. This is known as a Large Calorie, a Calorie, or a kilocalorie (note the lower case "c" in "kilocalorie) or Kcal.
So 1 Calorie = 1 Kcal = 1,000 calories.
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RossKcal or "kilocalorie" is usually what people actually refer to when they talk about calories.
In theory, a Kcal is also known as a Calorie (capital C)
1 Kcal = 1 Calorie = 1,000 calories
In practice however people only ever use Kcal so when you see something like 10g of butter = 70 calories, it SHOULD be 70 Calories or 70Kcal - but if you just work on the basis that anytime you see a calorie on a diet sheet or website, they all talk about the same thing.
It makes life easier, instead of saying a man needs 2,000,000 calories a day and 10g of butter contains 70,000 calories, we just scale back by 1,000.
REMEMBER that energy is neither created or destroyed but changed from one form to another. Kinetic energy (known as the energy during a motion) is the result of potential energy (stored energy by different means, by mechanical means or due to gravity). Joules is the unit of measuring the packet of energy, and kilojoules is just a bigger unit. 100J is 0.1kJ.
Some Expressions to measure energy.
Ek = 1/2mv2
EP = mgh unit is joules for both, k= kinetic, p= potential
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