Calories and cellular respiration aren't really the same but they're related. A calorie is a unit of energy. The food that an organism consumes contains chemical potential energy that's measured in calories. A food Calorie, which is spelled with a capital C, is really a kilocalorie or 1000 calories.
Cellular respiration is a process that breaks down the glucose from digested food to release energy. It stores the energy or calories in ATP molecules for use in cellular processes. ATP is adenosine triphosphate. Here's the chemical equation for cellular respiration:
+ energy
One glucose molecule provides the energy to produce 38 ATP molecules through aerobic cellular respiration. The ATP is made by joining a phosphate to an ADP, adenosine diphosphate. One mole of ATP molecule provides 7.3 kilocalories, so a mole of glucose (180 grams) is converted to 38 x 7.3 = 277 kilocalories or food Calories stored in ATP. This represents about 40% of the calories in glucose, with the rest lost to heat.
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