Tag: Wilbur atwater

In 1770, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier made a pivotal discovery, linking food metabolism to respiration, a foundational concept that led to him being hailed as the father of nutrition. However, the title's ownership is not as simple as it seems, as several other pioneers made indispensable contributions to the field's development.

The modern concept of tracking food energy began with the groundbreaking work of 18th-century French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. He was the first to propose that respiration is a form of combustion, and his early experiments laid the foundation for how they figured out calories in food.

The word "calorie" was first defined in the 1820s by French chemist Nicolas Clément, though the practice of using calories for nutrition and weight management did not become popular until much later. The story of when did people first start counting calories reveals a complex journey from engineering laboratories to public health campaigns and weight-loss trends.