Ok, this was driving me crazy, so looked it up. Kcal is smaller than a calorie.
From Wikipedia:
The small calorie or gram calorie (symbol: cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.2 joules.
The large calorie, kilogram calorie or food calorie (symbol: Cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. This is exactly 1000 small calories or about 4.2 kilojoules.
So then it's .001 X 2500 = 2.5 Calorie per digestable energy per kilogram of diet for weight gain. There are 0.45359237 kilograms in a lb. So that is 2.5 X .0.45359237 = 1.133 and then 1.133 X the DE of the food for weight gain. My brain is tired!
http://www.ker.com/library/advances/107.pdf is a spot I found that gives some approximate levels of DE.
If someone wants to check math, please do!
Renee
S CA<br /><br />__________ Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:44 pm __________<br /><br />So then it's .001 X 2500 = 2.5 Calorie per digestable energy per kilogram of diet for weight gain. There are 0.45359237 kilograms in a lb. So that is 2.5 X .0.45359237 = 1.133 and then 1.133 X the DE of the food for weight gain. My brain is tired!
http://www.ker.com/library/advances/107.pdf is a spot I found that gives some approximate levels of DE.
Should have mentioned that "translation" is from the 1977 book "The data suggest that a level of 2500 kcal of DE per kg of diet will satisfy the energy needs for rapid growth". Just for fun later I'm going to try to build a worksheet to put in values for different foods.
Renee
S CA