Are food labels accurate about the calories?

ihateyoga
ihateyoga Posts: 111
in Health and Weight Loss
I ate a big *kitten* bean paste bun. It's as big as a small size plate and very sweet. It no way is 180 calories as it's labeled. No wonder I'm still a fatty despite I stick to my recommended calorie intake. :explode:

Replies

  • sunsetzen
    sunsetzen Posts: 268 Member
    Did the label say 1 bun = 180 calories? Or was it "per 100g" and you weighed it?

    Labels are accurate as they can be, seeing as though calories are estimated,, on the in and out sides.
  • gigglesinthesun
    gigglesinthesun Posts: 860 Member
    also labels are tricky. For example my coconut cream has 2.7 servings in a tin, a pack of 2 muffins in my pantry has apparently got 4 servings in it, and the list goes on.

    I weigh everything and then go by the values per 100gr. It's not fool proof, because I think manufacturers are allowed to have a certain amount of variance in their product, but it is a good start.
  • SeriousBen
    SeriousBen Posts: 41 Member
    Beware of serving sizes! Sometimes it looks like a single item is a serving size but you might be wrong. I've seen cookies with 2 servings per cookie! Sometimes they put a tiny serving size on purpose in order to trick people that don't pay attention into thinking that their item is low calories. I got caught many times when I started dieting, especially with bread (1 slice vs. 2 slices).
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    It could be right. Depends on what they say a serving size is.

    There is a recipe for a bean paste bun on food.com that apparently is about 170 calories for one. In the picture it looks almost as big as the small plate its on.

    Then there is another one I found that is 170 calories for a tiny bun. Looks to be about 6 in the package and the serving size is 47g/1 bun.

    If I remember correctly company's are allowed to label the product with an error percentage, but I don't remember how big the error is allowed to be.
  • Chiefkeef420
    Chiefkeef420 Posts: 11
    Read serving size, do calculations, weigh your food, using measuring cups.
  • WhyDelilah79
    WhyDelilah79 Posts: 54 Member
    I have learnt also if you scan barcode to double check the calories per 100g before weighing as some things have been entered grossly wrong. For example, a pack of dried pasta shells listed as a tomato pasta sauce. I assume someone filled in the wrong item (someone in the uk coz it said asda, and no asda in oz lol).
    There have been lots with just slightly out numbers too.

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