Inaccurate Caloric Count? How does myfitnesspal calculate calories? Am I doing my math wrong?
cajayonabigail
Posts: 1 Member
Facts
1g of Protein = 4 Calories
1g of Carb = 4 Calories
1g of Fat = 9 Calories
If these facts are true why is the calorie count wrong on myfitnesspal?
According to my input, my caloric total should be (75 x 4) + (49 x 9) + (139 x 4) = 1,297 Calories. NOT 1,073 Calories. My remaining calories should be 3 Calories.
Can someone please explain or is this a bug?
1g of Protein = 4 Calories
1g of Carb = 4 Calories
1g of Fat = 9 Calories
If these facts are true why is the calorie count wrong on myfitnesspal?
According to my input, my caloric total should be (75 x 4) + (49 x 9) + (139 x 4) = 1,297 Calories. NOT 1,073 Calories. My remaining calories should be 3 Calories.
Can someone please explain or is this a bug?
1
Replies
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MFP is wrong a lot. If you focus on hitting your macro goals instead of just calories you'll be good. Somehow here you can be over macros and under calories which is right
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The calories are the accurate number and the one you should pay attention to, generally. Macro numbers are sometimes not put in correctly or rounding can make a big difference (for example, look at the tuna where twice as much gives you twice the protein, but not twice the fat -- that's because it's actually less than 1 g of fat and rounded up). Also there will be more carbs than cals, since there's a deduction the USDA has to account for fiber, which is in the carbs number but doesn't really have the same calories as non fiber carbs.
If you just used macros and not cals here, you would be undereating.8 -
MFP is wrong a lot. If you focus on hitting your macro goals instead of just calories you'll be good. Somehow here you can be over macros and under calories which is right
No...the issue is that most database entries are user entered...some entries are accurate and some are not. Some people may enter the correct calories but not enter the macros correctly. MFP isn't actually calculating anything at all...it's just displaying the data from whatever entries you chose.14 -
cajayonabigail wrote: »Facts
1g of Protein = 4 Calories
1g of Carb = 4 Calories
1g of Fat = 9 Calories
If these facts are true why is the calorie count wrong on myfitnesspal?
According to my input, my caloric total should be (75 x 4) + (49 x 9) + (139 x 4) = 1,297 Calories. NOT 1,073 Calories. My remaining calories should be 3 Calories.
Can someone please explain or is this a bug?
MFP doesn't calculate calories. It simply displays the data from whatever database entries you have chosen...there is zero calculation being performed.8 -
Some database entries are inaccurate. If precision matters to you, vet your choices from the database against an authoritative source, like the USDA food database, and/or the product label in your hand.
Recognize that rounding error still happens; and that the "calories per gram of X macro" are not necessarily exactly the same across different variants of the same macro, just close enough; and that some imprecision is legally allowed in food labels (in the US, some values may be off by 20%).
If one food has 3.1g protein, and another has 3.3g protein, for example, that's 6.4g, and it will show up in whole numbers are 6g. That's the idea behind the rounding part.
Also, macronutrients, in one sense, are not a well-defined thing, but rather big groups of things with a similar metabolic role and similar calories per gram. "Proteins" are really a combination of a bunch of different amino acids, for example. That's the "different but close enough" part.
Finally, though the day you show doesn't have any obvious sources, I'll mention this for completeness: Alcohol is not a carb, protein, or fat. It's it's own category, and calories are about 7 per gram of alcohol. It's like a pseudo-macro. Some sources call it a macronutrient, but it's hard for me to think of it as "a nutrient" because it's not nutritious. (I still drink some sometimes anyway.) Some food products include alcohol, without being something we think of as alcoholic, and can contribute to a calorie total. Example: Vanilla extract.
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I think the issue here is the fat grams listed for one half an avocado. It should be more like 12 grams of fat. That would put it in line with the 120 calorie count and account for 180 of the additional calories you see when you multiply out your macros.3
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In addition to what's already been said, US nutrition labels very recently (2019, I think?) changed how carbs are reported and figured into calories - as @lemurcat2 mentioned, carbs from fiber are subtracted out of the calorie count because your body can't actually access most of that energy. This is a recent change; the largely user-contributed database contains about 15 years worth of data, so the vast majority of the entries are going to report carbs the old way, without accounting for indigestible fiber. There are no database moderators going through and updating this information, and macros were not always required to be reported when adding a food to the database. If you're going to use MFP to track macros, you really need to triple-check and make sure the entries you're using contain correct and accurate macro information.3
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bethann551 wrote: »I think the issue here is the fat grams listed for one half an avocado. It should be more like 12 grams of fat. That would put it in line with the 120 calorie count and account for 180 of the additional calories you see when you multiply out your macros.
I think you're on to something...
It is also a user-created entry.
What is a large avocado anyway? This is a question I have not had to ponder since I got a food scale. While there are no entries for "Haas" avocado, I'm guessing the admin-created California entry would be best to use.
While there are big differences for the values of HALF California and non-specified entries, if one uses weights instead there are no differences in the macros and only 7 calories difference, which would be attributable to rounding.
Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.
To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I uncheck everything but “SR Legacy” - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.
Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.
For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)
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Your avocado is wacko
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The 4, 4, 9 cal/g values are rounded and inexact too. http://www.ncc.umn.edu/products/nutrients-nutrient-ratios-and-other-food-components/primary-energy-sources/4
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Just curious, why is your protein intake so high?
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Just a comment - there are 2 fluid ounces of rolled oats logged. Which aren't a liquid, and even if that was 2 ounces of rolled oats it would be far more than 67 calories. That's wonky.5
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The stats you've shown for those food values are suspicious. Best to use another verified database to doublecheck.
I've come across user-inputted values for food that were way off.
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My daily calorie count doesn’t even add up
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chrisduncanlive wrote: »My daily calorie count doesn’t even add up
It looks like they add up to me. 213+179=392 Breakfast. 499+213=712 lunch.0 -
If you're talking about totals, 392+712 should be your total eaten, i.e., 1104 calories. That, plus the 259 calories remaining, should add up to your goal (including any exercise calories you logged or your tracker synched). So, your goal for the day would be 1363.
I'm assuming the problem isn't with that (because you didn't show the total, or mention your goal). I'm assuming the problem isn't with the cross-foot of macros to calories, because earlier posts in the thread explain why that may not add up.
That leaves me wondering if you're misunderstanding what the 259 calories are, though of course I don't know that for sure. If you have 259 calories remaining, you should eat something close to that, to keep your target weight loss rate, as a generality. It's OK to eat a lot under goal on the odd non-hungry day, but it's not a good practice to leave nearly 20% of your calories uneaten routinely.2 -
Macros will never add up, they are always rounded to the nearest whole number. If the calories are fine, you are fine0
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I pay for MFP and expect it contain an accurate database of food counts. I am so disappointed that I can't rely on it to be accurate. It is supposed to make tracking your food intake easy, it doesn't. Instead I have to look up all the data elsewhere and then enter my own. I could do that in a spreadsheet for free. Is there a way to get the company to fix this??? How do I contact them?0
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The database is crowdsourced and gigantic, highly unlikely they will fix anything.
It's some work at the start, but once you have your regular foods in your Recent list, it becomes easier2
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