How accurate are food labels?

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Milabella
Milabella Posts: 34 Member
edited October 2015 in Food and Nutrition
Does anyone know if food suppliers make it a practice to measure calories to account for crop variations or just use standard measurements? I've been buying small bags of frozen strawberries from WholeFoods, but they started carrying larger bags, so I purchased those last time. Notice the difference in calories.

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  • Milabella
    Milabella Posts: 34 Member
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    Sorry, I don't have the icon that allows you to post pictures and it won't let me paste from my clipboard. The small bag is 70 cals for 140 g and the large bag is 50 cals for 140 g. Do you think this is accurate or a corrected mistake? I personally thought 70 cals was kinda high, I'd always used 50 cals for the same amount of fresh in the past. I was just following the package. Any tips on posting pics w/o the folded page icon and I'll try to post pics of the labels.
  • mathandcats
    mathandcats Posts: 786 Member
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    Milabella wrote: »
    Sorry, I don't have the icon that allows you to post pictures and it won't let me paste from my clipboard. The small bag is 70 cals for 140 g and the large bag is 50 cals for 140 g. Do you think this is accurate or a corrected mistake? I personally thought 70 cals was kinda high, I'd always used 50 cals for the same amount of fresh in the past. I was just following the package. Any tips on posting pics w/o the folded page icon and I'll try to post pics of the labels.

    Is one sweetened and the other not? Some frozen fruit has sugar added to it. Another thing to remember is that *all* of our calorie counts are only estimates - you can only be so accurate anyway. 20 calories is not a huge difference.
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,626 Member
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    It's always an estimate.

    The labels also tell you how much per serving size, but if you actually weigh it out, you'll find that there may be more in the package than the label indicates. On rare occasion, there will be less, but it's usually more. So, weigh it out to be sure you're getting the best possible estimate.
  • Yisrael1981
    Yisrael1981 Posts: 132 Member
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    Fda allows for up to 20% deviation from true calories count.
    Rule of thumb carbs have 4 calories a gram as do protein. Fats are 9 per gram
  • Milabella
    Milabella Posts: 34 Member
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    Alas, I'm on my work PC and have image upload capabilities. (If anyone knows how to upload images on a Samsung S4, please let me know.) Hopefully you can see the numbers.

    Here is the 10 oz package nutrition label
    080pvksgpegd.jpg6jndezpvkznu.jpg

    Here is the 2 lb package nutrtion label
    oi74ibq2dyu7.jpgzq4h35iekhhf.jpg

    It's the same product from the same brand with the same serving size 140 g, so I would expect the nutrition info to be the same, unless the product changed. IDK, maybe it's a diff variety of strawberries.

    @Kalikel Yes, lately I've been meaursing out 2 servings/280 grams so that is a 40 calorie difference between the packages. Yeah, I never expect the weight of the total package to match. Most of the time it's less, but once it has been more. I don't expect them to be cutting stuff in 1/2 to make it come out even.

    @mathandcats Nothing else added. Not really a big deal for me most of the time, but I am trying to lose and stay within a calorie limit, and they can add up fast. Another instance that happened last night is that I got a 28g snack bag of Nutter Butter Bites that read 140 calories on the label, but when I scanned it, 130 calories came up. It took me a while to find the match in the database because many entries for that size were 130 calories. So I again wondered if the product changed and which value was accurate. So I could have been + or - 50 calories for that meal (including the strawberries). If that's the case in every meal, I could be + or - 200 calories per day. If I have extra calories, I want to eat them! And I have learned not to post "I wonder why I can't lose weight" if I'm measuring everything on a scale (which I do) and can't account for extra calories, lol.

    @Yisrael1981 Thanks for that info! Good to know. I was never too much concerned about differences between brands/suppliers (the variations in apples and potatoes are endless). But didn't know they had leeway for the same exact product. Helps me put things in an even broader perspective.

    Thanks for the feedback guys!
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    That is... really odd. Honestly I'd contact them and ask!
  • mathandcats
    mathandcats Posts: 786 Member
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    Milabella wrote: »
    @mathandcats Nothing else added. Not really a big deal for me most of the time, but I am trying to lose and stay within a calorie limit, and they can add up fast. Another instance that happened last night is that I got a 28g snack bag of Nutter Butter Bites that read 140 calories on the label, but when I scanned it, 130 calories came up. It took me a while to find the match in the database because many entries for that size were 130 calories. So I again wondered if the product changed and which value was accurate. So I could have been + or - 50 calories for that meal (including the strawberries). If that's the case in every meal, I could be + or - 200 calories per day. If I have extra calories, I want to eat them! And I have learned not to post "I wonder why I can't lose weight" if I'm measuring everything on a scale (which I do) and can't account for extra calories, lol.

    My point is this: when they calculate the calories in the food, it's not perfectly accurate. Then, labelling rules allow them to round it (hence why packages are almost always nice round numbers, and not "173 calories"), within a certain margin. The Nutter Butters are not actually any different in one package to the next, but because of the labelling rules, the size of the serving (which is usually 1 package for snack sized things) changes how they can round the numbers, and that's why they're different. You can only be so accurate with packaged foods.

  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,626 Member
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    That's bizarre. Call them up and ask them what the heck.

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