Whole Foods Bakery Posted Calories Accurate?

springlering62

Visited Whole Foods for the first time in a while this afternoon. Surprised to see they are now clearly posting calorie counts in the bakery area. Some seemed reasonable compared to things I’ve seen on MFP, such as 140 calories for a two ounce serving of a baguette style bread. Others seemed all over the place. Cupcakes that were 380-1180, for example. Cookies that were lower than I expected.

I bought a slice of “tuxedo cheesecake” marked at 380 calories as a treat because I was way under for the day. But attempting to log it here, I’m getting wildly varying calories for similar items.

I’m going to log it at 380 but for grins will try to replicate the ingredients in the recipe builder.

Anyone have a clue how they’re calculating these calories?

cwolfman13

springlering62 wrote: »

Visited Whole Foods for the first time in a while this afternoon. Surprised to see they are now clearly posting calorie counts in the bakery area. Some seemed reasonable compared to things I’ve seen on MFP, such as 140 calories for a two ounce serving of a baguette style bread. Others seemed all over the place. Cupcakes that were 380-1180, for example. Cookies that were lower than I expected.

I bought a slice of “tuxedo cheesecake” marked at 380 calories as a treat because I was way under for the day. But attempting to log it here, I’m getting wildly varying calories for similar items.

I’m going to log it at 380 but for grins will try to replicate the ingredients in the recipe builder.

Anyone have a clue how they’re calculating these calories?

It's never going to be 100% accurate as even food labels are allowed some allowance. I would assume that a place like Whole Foods would have to follow the same requirements as restaurants over a certain number of locations which means that a sample of that food is sent to a lab to determine the calories.

lynn_glenmont

The last time I looked at calorie counts in the WF bakery, I found a lot of disparity among similar products on what was considered a serving. That is, one cupcake might be considered 1 serving, but another might be considered two servings (so the calories for the whole cupcake would be double the calories displayed).

astridtheviking

The ingredients in a recipe can also vary wildly. For example, I could buy a bakery cupcake at, say 500 calories, and make it with the exact same recipe, same ingredients in the same quantity, but if I use a different amount of frosting, my cupcake at home could be 400 or 600 calories. For the purposes of tracking, I would assume the listing at Whole Foods is more accurate than a random listing in the database, but be mindful of variation between items. Unless you get the exact recipe and the weight of the items (how much does the cake weigh? how much does the frosting weigh?) it is virtually impossible to be 100% sure.