Food Label Errors or Clever marketing

SMarie10

For my a.m. breakfast, I measured out 2/3 cup of Trader Joe's High Fiber Fruit & Nut Multigran Medley Cereal (yeah that's the whole title). According to the nurtition guide 2/3 cup, or 30 grams is one serving and = to 90 calories. Since I recently bought a food scale, I decide to weigh that portion to see how close it was to the 30 grams. To my utter horror *embelish*, it was more than 60 grams in weight. Double the calories I was expecting to consume. I guess I'm thankful for getting the scale so I can see what I'm truly getting for calories, but kind of torked off at Trader Joe's food packaging -nutritional labels. Anyone else finding this to be true when they measure in cups vs. grams.??

bizco

Definitely have found the same thing in almost all food labels. That's why I weigh EVERYTHING. Food scales are inexpensive and worth every penny.

Atlantique

Yes. I weigh everything now!

And I wish that when people were adding foods to the database, they'd include the grams along with the cups/tablespoons, etc.

mlh612

I love my food scale!! Yes, I weigh everything. Most of the time the cups & other measuring sizes aren't correct, so I stick measure everything in grams that I can....

Jwpawlowski

Haha that's such a difference!! I think that can be due to a couple of things. 1) You may have done this, but many people do not realize that 1 cup is 1 LEVELED cup, rather than a heaping cup. This could add alot more cereal/cup measured. 2) once packaged and transported, I'm sure the cereal breaks down a bit causing a higher density cup than the full pieces would. 3) the company could be rounding up to a cup size. Crazy though!!!

rmhand

there is also a differance between liquid measuring cups and dry measuring cups and who knows what the food maker is using!
liquid measuring cups use fluid ounces and the dry measuring cups are bigger to account for air space between pieces. Clear "glass" measuring cups with lines (like Pyrex) are for liquids and the scooping cups that come in sets are for dry foods.

SMarie10

Well, I'll admit that I was being lazy and used the pyrex (liquid) measure vs dry measuring cup; and didn't really level it off, but was still surprized that I had double the grams as a dry level measure would have afforded. I think part of it could have been the dry fruit in this particular cereal since that tends to settle at the bottom of the bag, and does weigh more than the dry cereal. Thanks all for your responses and I'll be using my scale much more often.

wolfchild59

Using the wrong kind of measuring cup could definitely contribute to false readings. Also, did you remember to zero out the weight of the measuring cup before you weighed the cereal? Just from your initial post it sounds like you poured out the cereal then put the whole thing on the scale to see what the weight was.