Just got a food shock...
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Do manufacturers have to be accurate with the calories per weight unit? Is it just the portion size that can be off???0
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In the U.S. it is allowable by law to be off in your nutrition labels by up to 20%. Could be high or low. Grams never lie, but any recipe can be off. Not only that, each piece of pizza will have slightly differing amounts of toppings.
Really, packaged food is a crapshoot.1 -
cmriverside wrote: »Was that pizza intended to be two servings? That's what it sounds like. Packaged food can be off by a margin of 10% or so, but I've never found one off by 50%. They wouldn't stay in business long with that error-factor!
Regardless, it's good to weigh everything, especially butter and cream cheese. Sometimes I'll guesstimate on plain raw veggies, but never on oils and fats. The tiniest amount is a lot of calories.
Why not just measure butter or cream cheese? I always measure out a tsp of butter.
Weighing is much more accurate.1 -
I weigh and measure everything, and was irritated that my sweet gerkins (sweet tiny pickles) were supposed to be 30 calories for 28g, then says "approximately 3 pickles". 1 pickle was 28 grams. I would have tripled my calories if I didn't have a scale and just used the label. I can't imagine if that happened with several foods all day long!
Keep at it, for sure!1 -
Yep I don't trust packaged foods one bit.
The biggest shocks for me were 'waffle waffle' waffles (man I love those things, but those 2 servings per waffles were more like 3 so a waffle was like 380 calories, although they've changed the composition since so it's 'only' 280 calories now) and Graze flapjacks. That 220 calories package often turned up 290 or something. Ugh.1 -
graysmom2005 wrote: »This is such a great post!!!
This is an awesome post!0 -
It can definitely be depressing , but at least you can see why everyone says weigh everything.
All these little discrepancies add up and bang your deficit is gone, leaving you frustrated when looking at that scale number not moving.
I have been weighing for ages but I still can't eyeball a correct serving of butter, cheese, Mayo or hummus.2 -
cmriverside wrote: »In the U.S. it is allowable by law to be off in your nutrition labels by up to 20%. Could be high or low. Grams never lie, but any recipe can be off. Not only that, each piece of pizza will have slightly differing amounts of toppings.
Really, packaged food is a crapshoot.
And in some cases you have to wonder if it is intentionally listed as 20% less than actual. 10 tortilla chips = X calories...um, no, weigh it and it is more like 8 chips = X calories.
With the public health consequences you might think nutrition labeling would be better. We might be better off if they just abandoned "servings" and listed the total calories for the entire package and the nutrition info per 100 grams or something.
I'm not saying a pint of ice cream is a serving. Not saying it isn't either.
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Yes! Log everything right down to butter used in a pan for sauteing or frying foods, oils like EVOO and definitely cream cheese, salsa and such. I always track every BLT (bite, lick and taste).
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cmriverside wrote: »In the U.S. it is allowable by law to be off in your nutrition labels by up to 20%. Could be high or low. Grams never lie, but any recipe can be off. Not only that, each piece of pizza will have slightly differing amounts of toppings.
Really, packaged food is a crapshoot.
And in some cases you have to wonder if it is intentionally listed as 20% less than actual. 10 tortilla chips = X calories...um, no, weigh it and it is more like 8 chips = X calories.
With the public health consequences you might think nutrition labeling would be better. We might be better off if they just abandoned "servings" and listed the total calories for the entire package and the nutrition info per 100 grams or something.
I'm not saying a pint of ice cream is a serving. Not saying it isn't either.
Isn't that what the UK does? I like their food labeling a lot better because it's usually per 50g or 100g serving and it's a lot easier to figure out how much a serving is.
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Colorscheme wrote: »No wonder I keep losing and gaining the same four pounds over and over again.
I log and weigh most things. I don't log condiments like ketchup or butter because I hardly use it except in very small amounts. So I would weigh my bagels and log it, but not the whipped butter I'd put on top. Or cream cheese.
However, I've been fed up with not making any progress so I thought it would be time to log and weigh everything.
So today I had a small pre-packaged pizza from Stew Leonard's. The label says it weighs 255 grams yet my food scale said it weighed 465 grams. That is a huge difference.
Since I make pizza at home from scratch, I was wondering how something that's pretty big could have the same amount of calories as my thin crush homemade pizza, as the pre-packaged pizza looks to be double the size.
I learned a very important lesson today. From now on I will be extremely diligent with weighing and logging.
And just to put it in perspective, the whole pizza according to the label says it's 520 calories. But with weighing it's actually 923 calories. So the label says one serving is 4 slices, but doing the math it's actually 7.
Hi
FWIW prepackaged foods must contain at least as much as the label shows or they will be in trouble with the weights and measures department. However if they are over it will cause no legal problems. Just look at liquids for example, they usually have slightly different levels showing on the ones where You can see the contents.
Good Luck
Roger0 -
Colorscheme wrote: »No wonder I keep losing and gaining the same four pounds over and over again.
I log and weigh most things. I don't log condiments like ketchup or butter because I hardly use it except in very small amounts. So I would weigh my bagels and log it, but not the whipped butter I'd put on top. Or cream cheese.
However, I've been fed up with not making any progress so I thought it would be time to log and weigh everything.
So today I had a small pre-packaged pizza from Stew Leonard's. The label says it weighs 255 grams yet my food scale said it weighed 465 grams. That is a huge difference.
Since I make pizza at home from scratch, I was wondering how something that's pretty big could have the same amount of calories as my thin crush homemade pizza, as the pre-packaged pizza looks to be double the size.
I learned a very important lesson today. From now on I will be extremely diligent with weighing and logging.
And just to put it in perspective, the whole pizza according to the label says it's 520 calories. But with weighing it's actually 923 calories. So the label says one serving is 4 slices, but doing the math it's actually 7.
Hi
FWIW prepackaged foods must contain at least as much as the label shows or they will be in trouble with the weights and measures department. However if they are over it will cause no legal problems. Just look at liquids for example, they usually have slightly different levels showing on the ones where You can see the contents.
Good Luck
Roger
Well I weighed my Dannon protein shake on my food scale and it was exactly 9.5 oz, same as the bottle says. But yeah, I learned from now on to weigh and measure everything that goes in my mouth. Hopefully I will start making progress.0 -
I started weight pre-packaged foods too, and you'd be amazed that the weight is off from what the package says.1
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anyone in the UK had this trouble? am thinking i should just leave my scales on the counter from now on.1
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I weigh and measure everything, and was irritated that my sweet gerkins (sweet tiny pickles) were supposed to be 30 calories for 28g, then says "approximately 3 pickles". 1 pickle was 28 grams. I would have tripled my calories if I didn't have a scale and just used the label. I can't imagine if that happened with several foods all day long!
Keep at it, for sure!
This is so funny because I had this EXACT irritation last night! The serving size in grams says "approximately 2.5 pickles." But when I weighed it, one pickle was just under the serving size in grams.
I still ate 2 pickles. But weighing meant that I logged accurately.0 -
So true. I have found so many products where the number of servings per package is WAY off. I used to think, well it says two servings per package so if I split it in half I'm fine. Then I weigh one half and it's twice the weight it should be. Or half the weight it should be, I've been surprised by both extremes!0
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emmaprocopiou wrote: »It can definitely be depressing , but at least you can see why everyone says weigh everything.
All these little discrepancies add up and bang your deficit is gone, leaving you frustrated when looking at that scale number not moving.
I have been weighing for ages but I still can't eyeball a correct serving of butter, cheese, Mayo or hummus.
I can get close to 28g of cheese by eyeballing now. And every time I am sad about what a tiny amount it is LOL.
About the pickles, something similar happened to me not too long ago but I can't remember for the life of me what the product was...
The issue with packaged food is two fold though... First, stuff often weighs more than what a serving is, then on top of that they are allowed to be off by 30% or something... that's why people who weigh a lot of processed food can't lose weight - it's still CICO, it's just that there are more calories than you think in those packages.0 -
emmaprocopiou wrote: »It can definitely be depressing , but at least you can see why everyone says weigh everything.
All these little discrepancies add up and bang your deficit is gone, leaving you frustrated when looking at that scale number not moving.
I have been weighing for ages but I still can't eyeball a correct serving of butter, cheese, Mayo or hummus.
I can get close to 28g of cheese by eyeballing now. And every time I am sad about what a tiny amount it is LOL.
About the pickles, something similar happened to me not too long ago but I can't remember for the life of me what the product was...
The issue with packaged food is two fold though... First, stuff often weighs more than what a serving is, then on top of that they are allowed to be off by 30% or something... that's why people who weigh a lot of processed food can't lose weight - it's still CICO, it's just that there are more calories than you think in those packages.
I wish the FDA only allowed a small percentage. To have food be off by 20 percent per serving, and have it be legal is ridiculous. 5 percent, I can understand. Ten percent, ok. But more than that? not fair.
I measured my butter and I use a lot less than a serving size but I'm still reeling over the pizza. There's over a four hundred cal difference between the package weight and the true weight. Combine that with eating all my exercise cals back, no wonder I wasn't really making progress.0 -
I agree with the recipe builder, it's a life saver. And if you log the recipe first, you know what you're getting into: do you need to make the cookies smaller than the recipe calls for to fit them into your day? Can you have 2 or 3?0
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I record everything, every bite. Butter has a lot of calories and is mostly fat. Cream cheese, ditto. But something like ketchup has calories too and can add up as others have said. I count everything, even a ten calorie jello or 40 calorie popsicle. And all my veggies and fruits. There are no free foods for me.0
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