Balance bars – nutrition label inaccuracies?

Snowbarrr
Snowbarrr Posts: 8 Member
edited September 24 in Food and Nutrition
Eating a balance bar has become a favorite part of my daily routine. They taste like candy bars to me! Double chocolate brownie, lemon meringue crunch, chocolate peanut butter – mmmmmhhhhhhhh…. Anyways, I was looking at the nutrition facts, and I noticed something odd.

On the lemon meringue crunch they list 14g protein, 23g carbs, and 9g fat – but the calories are listed as 200. As I understood calorie content, a gram of carb or protein is 4 calories, and a gram of fat is 9. So, 14*4+23*4+9*7=211 (not 200!).

Now I realize this may be a very small and trivial difference, but it just piqued my curiosity. Am I misunderstanding macronutrient calorie breakdown? Or are nutrition labels generally just a little bit off?

Replies

  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,294 Member
    Eating a balance bar has become a favorite part of my daily routine. They taste like candy bars to me! Double chocolate brownie, lemon meringue crunch, chocolate peanut butter – mmmmmhhhhhhhh…. Anyways, I was looking at the nutrition facts, and I noticed something odd.

    On the lemon meringue crunch they list 14g protein, 23g carbs, and 9g fat – but the calories are listed as 200. As I understood calorie content, a gram of carb or protein is 4 calories, and a gram of fat is 9. So, 14*4+23*4+9*7=211 (not 200!).

    Now I realize this may be a very small and trivial difference, but it just piqued my curiosity. Am I misunderstanding macronutrient calorie breakdown? Or are nutrition labels generally just a little bit off?

    How much fiber, a lot of labels take out fiber as fiber calories are not absorbed but rather passed. It is is off by 11 I would assume that the bar has 3ish grams of fiber 3*4 =12 close the the 11 that it is off. Or there could be like 13.8g protein, 22.7 carbs and 6.9g fat, or something like that, but are just rounded up
  • Snowbarrr
    Snowbarrr Posts: 8 Member
    Huh.... I did not know that! It lists 2 grams. Learn something new everyday!
  • CraftyGirl4
    CraftyGirl4 Posts: 571 Member
    When it comes to labeling, the FDA has certain rounding rules...much like your math class. When the answer to your math problem was 2.67, you could round off to 2.7. Same concept. It might actually be 8.45 grams of fat, for instance, but you round off to 9 on the label. 11 calories is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

    Also, most nutrition labels are caluclated totals anyway. You use the nutritional information provided from each of your ingredients and generally put it into a program and let it calculate the totals for you. These programs have the "rounding rules" already programmed into them so they can pop out with a label for you to use or you can pull the more technical report.
  • MrsBehaving
    MrsBehaving Posts: 100 Member
    And I also think they can legaly "fudge" the numbers up to a certain amount. Like when they say FAT FREE, they might really be .2 fat in there but the amount is so small, they don't have to claim it. Those numbers were just an example but you get my point. :)
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