Are nutrition labels really accurate?

LAMCDylan

Before I even saw this video I was thinking how dieters are so dependent on food labels. You only hope they are accurate. This is why I always never eat back my exercise calories in addition to leaving 100 extra calories as a buffer in case I measured calories incorrectly. Or in this case, labels are inaccurate. Anyway, I thought people here would find this video interesting.

http://mediaplayer.pearsoncmg.com/_cc_640x480/bc/bc_0media_hk/abcvideos/m4v/calories.m4v

queenliz99

Thanks for sharing

Tedebearduff

Shouldn't be eating those things anyways IMO.

Francl27

Or you can eat mostly fresh food, then you don't have to worry about it too much. But it explains why a lot of people don't lose when they eat too much processed food (plus, you know, the products themselves are often not the same weight than what the label tells you anyway).

Unfortunately, not eating exercise calories and leaving 100 extra calories as a buffer is just not possible as you get closer to your goal, as having a big deficit can be detrimental to your health.

SwankyTomato

Foods are not static with calories and nutrients and will always have a margin of error. It is just how it is.

Plus then you have to throw in food quality and cooking/not cooking the food in the mix.

Some foods need to be cooked to get the best benefit and some foods lose their optimum nutrient content. If you want optimum benefit, research the food and find the best way to prepare to get the best benefit.

earlnabby

Francl27 wrote: »

Unfortunately, not eating exercise calories and leaving 100 extra calories as a buffer is just not possible as you get closer to your goal, as having a big deficit can be detrimental to your health.

I agree. The 100 calorie buffer isn't a bad idea, but eat back at least half of your exercise calories. The errors will likely be in the 5% or less range or so, which means 100 calories on a 2000 calorie diet. You don't need the second buffer.

suelegal

I'll vote for whole, unprocessed foods. It's much better for you than processed and you can be way more accurate with cals and macros. I know, it doesn't fit everyone's lifestyle. It doesn't even fit my lifestyle and I use whole foods most of the time.

chivalryder

Yup. Every nutrition label is incorrect. They all round the number of calories to the nearest 5 or 10 calories, usually rounding down. You can figure this out by actually calculating what the caloric value is based on the protein, carbs, and fat. They can be off by up to 10%.

honkytonks85

Calorie counting is not an exact precise science regardless of what you eat. Neither is estimating calories burned in a day.

funchords

They're accurate enough to be useful, but the error rate can be high both in measuring the food's calories, but also in how many you digest vs. pass through and how your body uses them.

BTW, I've lost 90 lbs. in 6.5 months and I eat most of my exercise calories and I keep a tight log. No need to be austere. I'm in this for the long run -- I'm not in a hurry even though I've lost faster than predicted.

stm17

I must be missing something . . . . "Of the 10 meals tested, 3 were under, 4 were close and 3 were over" OK so when all 10 meals are averaged out - it sure seems like you would be pretty close to the nutritional label. 3-4-3 seems like a normal bell curve to me.

joneallen

I never cared for the inaccuracy of labels. I just log the labels, exercise and tweak as I see fit.

JenniDaisy

Tedebearduff wrote: »

Shouldn't be eating those things anyways IMO.

Thanks, Mum.

Liftng4Lis

Close enough.

iplayoutside19

Pretty sure the accuracy of nutrition labels is NOT one of the reason I was fat, or the reason I'm not as slim as I want to be. Or the reason western culture has an obesity problem. If you're counting calories, all you're doing is estimating anyway.

TimothyFish

So in other words, the inaccuracy of the labels is going to drive people who weigh their food batty, but the rest of us don't have to worry about it because we're allowing for broad inaccuracy anyway.

Francl27

TimothyFish wrote: »

So in other words, the inaccuracy of the labels is going to drive people who weigh their food batty, but the rest of us don't have to worry about it because we're allowing for broad inaccuracy anyway.

I weigh my food, I've lost 80 pounds. I just don't use that much processed food overall.

TimothyFish

Francl27 wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

So in other words, the inaccuracy of the labels is going to drive people who weigh their food batty, but the rest of us don't have to worry about it because we're allowing for broad inaccuracy anyway.

I weigh my food, I've lost 80 pounds. I just don't use that much processed food overall.

If you pay attention to the video, it isn't the fact that the food is processed that causes the label to be inaccurate, it is just the nature of food.

If I were weighing my food to the gram, it would drive me crazy to know that I could weigh two apples with the same weight and not realize that one of them had 5% more calories than the other.

segacs

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Food labels can be off by +-20%, but consistency over time when you're eating certain things a lot will make it all come out in the wash.

Calorie counts posted by restaurants on menus have an even bigger margin of error, because I can guarantee you that no cook is in the back of a restaurant meticulously weighing and measuring every ingredient. Portion sizes vary, the amount of butter and oil used in cooking varies... Even if a restaurant provides calorie counts, they should be used as a rough guide only.

We have to accept a certain amount of inaccuracy in this. It's not a laboratory. It's real life.

Do the best you can to count as accurately as you can, and then just accept that it's going to be slightly off. It doesn't matter. You'll still lose weight as long as you're sticking to your calorie goal every day.

Hornsby

segacs wrote: »

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Food labels can be off by +-20%, but consistency over time when you're eating certain things a lot will make it all come out in the wash.

Food labels can be overestimated by 20% but can't be underestimated.

segacs

Hornsby wrote: »

Food labels can be overestimated by 20% but can't be underestimated.

That's not how statistical variance works. They can sometimes be underestimated, too.