Are nutrition labels really accurate?
LAMCDylan
Posts: 1,218 Member
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
http://mediaplayer.pearsoncmg.com/_cc_640x480/bc/bc_0media_hk/abcvideos/m4v/calories.m4v
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Thanks for sharing0
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Shouldn't be eating those things anyways IMO.0
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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.0 -
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.
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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.
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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.0
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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%.0
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Calorie counting is not an exact precise science regardless of what you eat. Neither is estimating calories burned in a day.0
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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.0 -
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.0
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I never cared for the inaccuracy of labels. I just log the labels, exercise and tweak as I see fit.0
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Tedebearduff wrote: »Shouldn't be eating those things anyways IMO.
Thanks, Mum.0 -
Close enough.0
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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.0
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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.0
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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.0 -
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.0 -
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.0 -
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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.
No it's not, why would it?
Look we get it ...you set your calories at an arbitrarily low level to account for the fact that you don't weigh because weighing is inaccurate and it works for you
You know what that's the point, find what works for you
When people come on complaining they're not losing even though they're sticking to their calories it is easy to see that they in fact are fooling themselves in some way ...because if they were they would lose ...the retraining comes in removing as many variables as possible in this inaccurate world of estimation ...giving them a learning curve and then they can also choose to weigh / not weigh but they have a tool to get them on track
Just because you don't weigh doesn't make you better at this game than those who do
Just because it works for you at your arbitrary calorie number is no reason to tell others you need to cut calories ...if they are struggling they need to understand why and how to fix it before making their own decision on how to keep going.
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Yeah, I agree. Just picking fruit a little greener than normal can result in it having fewer calories rather than more calories. The companies that use the fruit in their products have no way of controlling that, which is why the wide variance is allowed.0 -
It's only certain nutrients that are not allowed to be over-represented on the label (by law). Not everything. And definitely not calories.
ETA: I think I remember the nutrients that could not be over-represented on the label (but could be under-represented) were supplements like added vitamin D in milk, but I can't find the right FDA CFR document to confirm. Oh well.0 -
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.
+1
Also, it doesn't make a lot of sense if you are doing a LOT of intense exercise, like longer runs. There could be a huge difference between your real TDEE and your TDEE if sedentary.
I weigh my food, but since I use the USDA numbers mostly I don't have a false idea that my numbers are perfectly accurate and don't really care. They'll average out.0 -
It's only certain nutrients that are not allowed to be over-represented on the label (by law). Not everything. And definitely not calories.
ETA: I think I remember the nutrients that could not be over-represented on the label (but could be under-represented) were supplements like added vitamin D in milk, but I can't find the right FDA CFR document to confirm. Oh well.
"The Third Group nutrients include calories, sugars, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium. However, for products (e.g., fruit drinks, juices, and confectioneries) with a sugars content of 90 percent or more of total carbohydrate, to prevent labeling anomalies due in part to rounding, FDA treats total carbohydrate as a Third Group nutrient instead of a Class II nutrient. For foods with label declarations of Third Group nutrients, the ratio between the amount obtained by laboratory analysis and the amount declared on the product label in the Nutrition Facts panel must be 120% or less, i.e., the label is considered to be out of compliance if the nutrient content of a composite of the product is greater than 20% above the value declared on the label. For example, if a laboratory analysis found 8 g of total fat/serving in a product that stated that it contained 6 g of total fat/serving, the ratio between the laboratory value and the label value would be (8 / 6) x 100 = 133%, and the product label would be considered to be out of compliance."
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm063113.htm
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Close enough. Averages out over the long term as long as you are being honest and doing your best with your logging.0
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Also beware of serving size tricks. Some products (e.g. cooking sprays) use a tiny serving size so that they can claim to have "zero" calories. Actually, anything that has between zero and five calories can claim to have zero calories. But since most people don't use a half-second spray but more like a 5-second spray, that "zero"-calorie spray could actually have 40-50 calories.
Most misleading of all, IMHO, is when the package directions use a different serving size than the nutritional information. For instance, a box of dry pasta will sometimes give nutritional information for 40g, and then directions for "1 person" that tell you to cook up 80g or 100g. They really should be required to list nutritional information for a serving that a reasonable person would actually eat.0 -
Fresh foods have exactly the same problem. The calorie counts you get for them are averages too, they can be higher or lower in the actual thing.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.
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It's only certain nutrients that are not allowed to be over-represented on the label (by law). Not everything. And definitely not calories.
ETA: I think I remember the nutrients that could not be over-represented on the label (but could be under-represented) were supplements like added vitamin D in milk, but I can't find the right FDA CFR document to confirm. Oh well.
"The Third Group nutrients include calories, sugars, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium. However, for products (e.g., fruit drinks, juices, and confectioneries) with a sugars content of 90 percent or more of total carbohydrate, to prevent labeling anomalies due in part to rounding, FDA treats total carbohydrate as a Third Group nutrient instead of a Class II nutrient. For foods with label declarations of Third Group nutrients, the ratio between the amount obtained by laboratory analysis and the amount declared on the product label in the Nutrition Facts panel must be 120% or less, i.e., the label is considered to be out of compliance if the nutrient content of a composite of the product is greater than 20% above the value declared on the label. For example, if a laboratory analysis found 8 g of total fat/serving in a product that stated that it contained 6 g of total fat/serving, the ratio between the laboratory value and the label value would be (8 / 6) x 100 = 133%, and the product label would be considered to be out of compliance."
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm063113.htm
I think you guys are saying the same thing.
Certain nutrients (where we are particularly concerned that they not mislead you into thinking there are more whatever than there is) are supposed to be within a reasonable amount of the number when tested* but, specifically, must be at least 80% of the number given to be in compliance with the law.
Others (and this includes calories), where we are particularly concerned that they not mislead you into thinking there is less whatever than there is, are also supposed to be within a reasonable amount of the number when tested* but, specifically, must not be more than 120% of it to be in compliance with the law.
*Reasonable excesses of class I and II nutrients above labeled amounts and reasonable deficiencies of the Third Group nutrients are usually considered acceptable by the agency within good manufacturing practices.0
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