MFP Bad Math?

Mr_Knight

My macros right now are sitting at:

Carbs: 147
Fat: 71
Protein:143

So that should be 147 * 4 + 71 * 9 + 143 * 4 => 1811 calories. But MFP says 2,400 calories!

Am I having a total brain fart here, or is something wrong...?

Francl27

It comes from inaccurate entries and rounding up.

Mr_Knight

Ok, narrowed it down to one entry that has the following breakdown:

540 calores from 44g carb, 10g fat, 4g protein.

"Super Store No Name Hashbrowns (85g)"

This means a bunch of earlier meals were meaningfully less calories than logged - gah - no wonder I've been hungry.

MoreBean13

Even though you already figured out the source of your problem, another thing that messes up calorie math is fiber. It's included in total carbs, but the calories aren't 4cal/gm, they're more like 2cal/gm....but they're sometimes figured as 4cal/gm anyway, sometimes 2cal/gm, sometimes zero, and sometimes people just arbitrarily adjust the calories to these nonsense "net carbs" entries that make it one step harder to figure out what you're dealing with.

TL;DR, fiber can mess it up, too.

jonnythan

MFP does not calculate calories from macros. It just adds up the calories from what you entered in your diary. Any inaccuracies come from food labels or mistakes in the diary entries themselves.

Mr_Knight

TL;DR, fiber can mess it up, too.

Bloody hell. That's worse than useless!

Is there a mechanism for flagging bad entries?

Thanks, all. Will just have to be even more vigilant about make choices out of the database.

stumblinthrulife

Some food entries in the FB have calories but not the p/f/c split. So they can contribute to your logged calories but not your logged macros.