What Are Fat and Calories?
Fats, or lipids, are nutrients in food that the body uses to build nerve tissue (like the brain) and hormones. The body also uses fat as fuel. If fats that a person has eaten aren’t burned as energy or used as building blocks, they are stored by the body in fat cells. This is the body’s way of thinking ahead: By saving fat for future use, it plans for times when food might be scarce. A calorie is a unit of energy that measures how much energy food provides to the body. The body needs calories to function properly.
