Beware!!

cchinnery
cchinnery Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
A lot of the food nutritional information is incorrect. Please Google and double check for yourself.

Replies

  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,851 Member
    It most certainly is. You have to spend a lot of time sifting through to find the "right" information. This is because the information is crowd sourced from random users who have entered nutritional information. And they are often wrong. Or playing fast and loose with the calorie estimates.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,055 Member
    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. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's 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. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)
  • Fattyohfat
    Fattyohfat Posts: 54 Member
    Yep I eat a lot of eggs, and depending on where you look on the site they're anywhere from 60 calories to 78 calories for "LARGE".
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,119 Member
    cchinnery wrote: »
    A lot of the food nutritional information is incorrect. Please Google and double check for yourself.

    Well, yes, but googling isn't a very good way to get accurate information, either. Check the label or the website of the restaurant chain or manufacturer. Check the USDA nutrition database.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,055 Member
    Fattyohfat wrote: »
    Yep I eat a lot of eggs, and depending on where you look on the site they're anywhere from 60 calories to 78 calories for "LARGE".

    And this is one place where my tips above will fail you. The ADMIN-created entry "Egg, whole, raw, fresh" was in the MFP database when I first joined, but disappeared years ago and was never put back. It's 72 calories for 1 large.
  • lesdarts180
    lesdarts180 Posts: 3,171 Member
    You also have to take into account that a lot of users are not in the USA - our labelling rules might be different and the actual nutritional content of foods that appear to be like the American versions may be different.
    For instance, eggs here in the UK are not sized the same as USA eggs.
    Also, here in the UK (and the EU I believe) our labels do not state sodium - we have salt on our labels so it is impossible to accurately transcribe the nutritional data. Well, not impossible but it would involve a fairly difficult conversion factor.

    It all boils down to "READ THE LABEL" if you have the packaging,
    Fruit & veg from a market stall (or your garden) and meat/fish from butchers and fishmongers - do your research wisely.

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