FDA gives a 20% leeway for accuracy on nutrition labels.

Just a heads up to let everyone know to use caution if they, like me, sometimes count daily available calories down to 0. You know if they get a 20% leeway most food manufacturers are going to use it to their advantage and under report the calories in their products.

Really ? I would use it to give yo 19.9% less food than it said on the label.

But I guess you don't have to worry about this too much if you eat mostly non-commercial foods? Or more natural foods?
For example, things like fruit and vegetables should always have a similar amount of calories, right? And maybe things like rice, pasta, meat, etc.?

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I kinda knew this, but I didn't know it was like 20%, thats alot. Actually, that is just inacurate and kinda alot BS, noone else gets that kind of leeway! Just think if I eat all those food and I have 5% of my calories leftover, but I ate food all that day that was 20% over, I just BLEW my calories way out of the water. *cries*

I usually do inflation anyways, but not 20%. Guess its a good thing I set my goal at 1500 and not 2000. >.>

The 20% difference is actually referring to what restaraunts say is in their food.

And its not so much that they allow 20% and above that they dont allow. Its that they take these companies at their word, and in one study it was shown to be up to 20% more than what was listed.

ahhh, important distinction. yay for those who actually read lol

When it comes down to it, every measurement is an estimate.

While this is true, it may not be accurate to say that everything is up to 20% off.

Many of the nutrition labels are based on diet amounts of 2000 or 2500 calories. If you are not consuming these amounts then your numbers are going to be off anyway.

The calories contained in an item do not change based on the consumer's caloric needs.

Here's a fun fact:

... a Harvard professor created a buzz when she spoke out about the shortcomings of the 100+ year old formula used to determine the calorie values many people rely upon. Turns out, based on further study, several foods actually contain less, because some components don’t get digested. Incomplete digestion means that rather than being absorbed into the body, where calories have to be burned, used, or stored, some simply travel through your digestive system, to become excreted as waste. This type of analysis led to the recent insight that almonds supply about 30% fewer calories than the label states...

So just as some items may be higher, some may be lower.

This is also true of foods once you cook them. If you're using MFP and choosing "Broccoli, raw" but are actually steaming said broccoli, you're removing some of the calories during the process.

I always inwardly chuckle when people are posting in here on having to be absolutely accurate when entering calorie amounts. There is no "absolute" when it comes to counting calories; everything about it is an estimate. HRMs give an estimate of calories burned, food entries are an estimate as well. All we can do is track as best we can and hope it all washes out in the end.

When it comes down to it, every measurement is an estimate.

While this is true, it may not be accurate to say that everything is up to 20% off.

It certainly can't hurt to assume wide margins of error. Just like scale weight, there are just too many variables we can't measure to be absolutely certain of any specific value. Thay said, the long term averages (of both calories and scale weights) are fairly decent approximations for what the actual values were. If we focus on those, it is easier to make sense of the data. It is why I use the weekly total calories instead of daily, and the weekly sum of my daily weights, when I consider my progress. The error is still there (about 150 calories plus or minus a day and 0.5 kg plus or minus a day) but are much smaller than the typical daily error amounts.

I agree its helpful to KNOW there is a margin of error. However, to put a number on it that is not entirely accurate could cause someone to decrease their caloric intake to dangerous levels. I am 5"0' so 1200 isn't necessary unhealthy for me BUT if I was 5"0' and was told my calories are inflated by 20%, I may cut down to the dangerously low 1000 just to account for that inflation.

BTW I am not at 1200, my body doesn't like it and it's not right for me. I'm closer to 1430 and while I know there is some room for error, its certainly better than the 3000-4000 cal (estimated) I was consuming every day.

But I guess you don't have to worry about this too much if you eat mostly non-commercial foods? Or more natural foods?
For example, things like fruit and vegetables should always have a similar amount of calories, right? And maybe things like rice, pasta, meat, etc.?

Actually, it's just as bad or worse for natural foods. The nutrition facts represent an average for that food based on certain (often unstated) assumptions about the food items.

When it comes down to it, every measurement is an estimate.

if you weigh food, instead of counting it, e.g. logging the numger of grams you ate, rather than logging it as e.g. "1 apple, large" then it's pretty accurate.

It may not be entirely accurate as the amount of calories in an apple will vary a little, but it's not going to be that far off.

The issue of restaurants is because they don't weigh everything that goes onto the plate, the kitchen staff put the food on the play paying attention to presentation and getting the dish right - they're not going to cut every steak to the exact same size, or weigh the exact same number of french fries onto the plate... but if you're making your own food at home, you can weigh the steak and the fries and log the exact number of grams - so even if you account for individual variation between one steak and another, it's still more accurate than the way the portion foods in the restaurant.

Also, when cutting, I weigh foods and whatever level of inaccuracy still exists due to small variations in one piece of food compared to another piece of the same type of food is clearly not enough to make any significant impact in my deficit

As for packaged food - I usually weigh these as well, and find that the exact number of grams is slightly different to what it says on the packet, but not by much. And it's just as often slightly under. When you consider that shops will lose revenue if they're selling overweight portion sizes, that's not surprising. If they make enough for a batch of 1000 items, but then make the portion sizes too big, then they'll end up with only 950 items... the unit price will be the same so they'll make less profit. Having the weight on the package was made a legal requirement long before people were concerned about calories - they were concerned about companies selling them underweight portion sizes to make more money. Calories are only a recent concern because so many people get fat from being sedentary nowadays.

Many of the nutrition labels are based on diet amounts of 2000 or 2500 calories. If you are not consuming these amounts then your numbers are going to be off anyway.

The calories contained in an item do not change based on the consumer's caloric needs.

If this is the case then why even place any specific amounts on the label?

I agree its helpful to KNOW there is a margin of error. However, to put a number on it that is not entirely accurate could cause someone to decrease their caloric intake to dangerous levels. I am 5"0' so 1200 isn't necessary unhealthy for me BUT if I was 5"0' and was told my calories are inflated by 20%, I may cut down to the dangerously low 1000 just to account for that inflation.

BTW I am not at 1200, my body doesn't like it and it's not right for me. I'm closer to 1430 and while I know there is some room for error, its certainly better than the 3000-4000 cal (estimated) I was consuming every day.

That person would be misunderstanding the numbers. The calories can be as much as 20% higher or lower. The could just as well justify increasing their intake so as not to fall below 1,200 as they could justify decreasing it because they don't want to be over it. Understanding the margin of error isn't a reason to change anything. It's helpful when considering why you may not be getting exactly the results that "calories-in minus calories-out" suggests you should.

It is also worth noting that the 20% is essentially a wash. If one product is 15% higher, another 13% lower, one 4% higher, the next 6% lower... etc... the error margin dramatically reduces rapidly. Even more than a daily error of 20%, we should be considering all products with a 20% error. If you eat 6 different 200 calories foods (keeping with the 1200 calories / day number), you don't get an error of +/- 240 calories at the end of the day. The error is actually +/- 98 calories (around 8%). The more measurements made, the smaller the percentage of the cumulative error becomes. I tend to consider the daily total when calculating error ranges, only because it simplifies the calculations. The error ranges I get are actually much larger than the real error ranges would be. My long term averages (assuming I measure and log accurately) can be assumed to very reasonably approximate the actual values.

Knowing the error is useful only for deeper analysis. It can't be used to drive decisions because you have no way of knowing the magnitude nor direction of the error for every item you consume. You just have to base your decisions on the values you have to work with, and accept that approximation is the way of life.

I am comfortable with your explanation at this level. Thank you.

ETA: I know the person would be misunderstanding the numbers. Your explanation should clear up that misunderstanding.

This is old news.

Calorie counts at chipotle are off? You mean the lady scooping my rice isn't weighing it, or even leveling it? (sounds of dripping sarcasm). At chains like subway and chipotle where they make it while you watch, you can ask for "heavy" or "light" on any ingredient. For example, I always say, "a little rice" because I don't want my veggie bowl to be mostly rice.

Learn how much is about a portion, weigh it as best as you can when you can, and modify your daily intake of regular foods based on how your weight changes over time if nothing else is changing.