AUTHOR=Fenton Tanis R. , Elmrayed Seham 

TITLE=The Importance of Reporting Energy Values of Human Milk as Metabolizable Energy

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Nutrition

VOLUME=8

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.655026

DOI=10.3389/fnut.2021.655026

ISSN=2296-861X

ABSTRACT=<p>Nutrition science has a convention to report metabolizable energy instead of gross energy. Metabolizable energy at 4 kilocalories per gram for protein and carbohydrate, 9 kcal per gram for fat (kilojoules: 17 and 37, respectively) represents the food energy available for metabolism. However, this convention to use metabolizable energy has not been uniformly applied to human milk. Human milk is often reported as gross energy, which is about 5–10% higher than metabolizable energy. To obtain accurate human milk energy estimates, milk samples need to contain the same proportion of high fat hind milk that an infant obtains.</p>