Canned soup - serving vs can calories?

vsheetz1

2 serving = 160
Can = 190

Why the difference?
How to log?

Thx!

AnnPT77

What soup? What label? You haven't really given enough info to give a specific answer.

Usually, the label will give a weight in grams, or a volume in fluid ounces or milliliters, too. If it's a condensed soup (to which you're supposed to add water or milk), it may have "as prepared" values, too. Labels vary depending on what country you're in.

In the US, serving sizes are somewhat standardized in regulations, but the manufacturer can package the foods in whatever ways they want.

It sounds like your can of soup contains (assuming your number stated is calories? you don't say) 1.1875 servings, which is weird, I admit. The key issue is how much did you eat? You'll need to do some arithmetic to log it, maybe, unless you ate the whole can, in which case just use the info for the whole can.

Here's an example label, which happens to be for Progresso Traditional Chicken Noodle Soup:



What I'd do with this is put a bowl (or pan) on my food scale, tare (zero) the scale, dump however much soup I wanted into the bowl. Let's say it's 260 grams of soup. The standard serving size is 242 grams. If the MFP database entry I'm using is per 1 Cup or per serving, I do some math. Specifically, I had 260 divided by 242 grams, which is 1.07 servings. So, I'd log 1.07 servings or 1.07 cups. If the database entry is per can (less likely, with this label), it's more math, but I can get to the same approximate answer, within limitations of rounding error. It's a little less precise if I'm using a measuring cup instead of a scale, but the concept is the same.

That's maybe complicated sounding when you start out with MFP, but it gets pretty automatic with experience. I'm much better at this sort of thing than I was when I started: Calorie counting has improved my applied math ability, arithmetic skills, number memory, and all that sort of thing.