Nutrition Facts Labels - you will not like this!

Mom0819

This is from "Eat This - Not That".

The FDA allows food manufacturers to use averages for the calorie counts, salt content and fat grams (and any other information on the Nutrition Facts panel) of their foods, and food manufacturers are allowed to be off by as much as 20 percent. So that 500-calorie frozen dinner you're eating could have as many as 600 calories. If every meal you ate had 100 extra calories, you'd gain an additional 30 pounds this year. Another sticky label? Trans fats. The FDA allows manufacturers to put “0” if the amount of trans fats per serving is below .5 grams. “That’s a quarter of a day’s worth,” says Jayne Hurley, RD, senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who notes that 2 grams is what health experts suggest should be your daily limit.

http://www.rodale.com/10-food-label-lies?page=5

Hoop4la

That is scandalous ! Thanks for sharing . All the more reason not to eat processed foods I guess

jayliospecky

All of the calorie counts we use are at best, estimates. So there's always an element of inaccuracy to all of this. It's not really necessary to get too stressed out about it.

AllTehBeers

An extra 30 pounds for who?

Yes, there are FDA rules that let manufacturers skew numbers, but if you're eating a balanced diet and counting as best you can, you're not going to balloon 30 pounds just randomly. You can balance out those skewed numbers by doing those little things people always talk about like parking at the back of the parking lot, taking an extra flight of stairs or doing a few jumping jacks during commercials.

Calorie counting is not perfect in any sense, but knowing a general idea of how much you eat verses how much you burn will put you in the right almost every time. The proof here is in the success section.