How many calories are there in a gram of sugar?

How many calories are there in a gram of sugar?

I was looking at the food label and it lists that fat has 9 kcal/gram, protein has 4 kcal/gram, and carbohydrate has 4 kcal/gram. I don’t see sugar anywhere on there. So I was wondering how many calories are there in a gram of sugar?

Sugar is a form of carbohydrate, so it contains 4 kcal/gram. In fact, the more “complex” carbohydrates (ie…starches) are just glucose (sugar) chains. In the representation below, each hexagonal shape is a glucose molecule, and together they make up a starch molecule (fyi starch can extend to 1000s of glucose molecules). For more info on this, check out previous posts here and here.

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