Beware Calorie Errors

Thanks for the heads up but I doubt if it would be much to worry about. If folk are under their cals on most days, then even having an extra 100 cals a day stuck on would mean your still burning cals up. Also over a period of a week a lot of folk will have a deficit in cals.

Last but not least if your loosing weight and doing well then your fine.....

So, are you saying that they are listing less calories than they should per serving?

Something to be aware of, and it's the reason I almost always log more calories than I actually ate.

Like everything it's all just estimates. Calories, BF%, BMR, TDEE, nothing is going to be exact and it doesn't have to be to lose weight.

Funny, but I suspected as much. I also wonder about the accuracy of the calorie counts that McDonald's and other fast food restaurants offer. I think they err on the low side.

I always weigh my food, and rarely do I eat anything that comes in a per-portioned pack such as cereal bars etc... But this is a good point to make. Perhaps weigh your items and add on extra calories to what the package says as needed.

This. My food scale is such a HUGE help when figuring out my portions and such. I actually get more food from things like chicken, but I was eating wayyy too much peanut butter and apples. I have weighed a few protein bars and cereal bars just to double check and they came our right though. I try not to eat out much anymore, but at least living in Japan, they follow portion size and how much they are supposed to put on.

For example, I've worked at McDonalds for 9 years total in my life. You are supposed to put a sundae cup lid size portion of shredded lettuce on a sandwich and only 5 slivered onions, but I've seen the kids put very little lettuce or twice as much lettuce and a handful of slivered onions on a sandwich. That's not even counting the fact that our sauce guns for mayo, tartar, and mac sauce usually aren't calibrated correctly and you often get too much mayo or tartar and too little mac sauce (which most employees compensate for by doubling the squirts). In Japan, they adhere to the standards so I have faith that their calorie counts are more accurate than a McDonalds in the US.

Anyway, invest in a food scale and measure your portions because the calorie count is usually right, but the serving size of 1 cup is usually a little higher than the x amount of grams it gives you.

Funny, but I suspected as much. I also wonder about the accuracy of the calorie counts that McDonald's and other fast food restaurants offer. I think they err on the low side.

I do NOT trust restaurants at all. There is a whole lot of variations since they don't weigh anything. I always figure a restaurant meal from almost anyplace will have at the very least 100 extra calories.

Hah...I just unknowingly kind of answered this statement from my personal experience.

McDonald's is a very organized and exact company. Everything from the condiments to the buns to the sauce is as exact as possible. You mess up profit margins when you give customers more than they pay for...

When I worked at arby's, we weighed the roast beef per sandwich.

Funny, but I suspected as much. I also wonder about the accuracy of the calorie counts that McDonald's and other fast food restaurants offer. I think they err on the low side.

I do NOT trust restaurants at all. There is a whole lot of variations since they don't weigh anything. I always figure a restaurant meal from almost anyplace will have at the very least 100 extra calories.

Hah...I just unknowingly kind of answered this statement from my personal experience.

McDonald's is a very organized and exact company. Everything from the condiments to the buns to the sauce is as exact as possible. You mess up profit margins when you give customers more than they pay for...

You think high school kids care about profit margins? No...they care about getting money and doing as little work as possible. They always stuck managers on shifts who were not assertive enough to do it properly. Plus, at my particular stores, they never even told us those standards until my last few months of working there. I also put together proper training documents for the store manager and she has never once utilized them even though it would make our store cleaner/more efficient/up to standards.