How accurate is the serving size for packaged food?

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tgcake
tgcake Posts: 59 Member
in Food and Nutrition
On average, how off are serving sizes in terms of actual weight? For instance, if it says 5 crackers are 160g, how many grams is 5 crackers likely to actually be?

I'm not looking for perfect accuracy but more along the lines of add X% more calories/grams. I don't - and won't - weigh all my food so I'm trying to find out how much more I should add. Right now I'm tacking on about 500 extra calories per day.

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  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
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    Weigh everything, but 100 grams is 100 grams and if you enter the correct weight, you will be good. The issue comes with single serving packages. In order to not short the consumer, most are slightly more than their stated weight. I bought an 8 oz package of lunch meat that actually was 8.5 oz.
  • tgcake
    tgcake Posts: 59 Member
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    earlnabby wrote: »
    Weigh everything, but 100 grams is 100 grams and if you enter the correct weight, you will be good. The issue comes with single serving packages. In order to not short the consumer, most are slightly more than their stated weight. I bought an 8 oz package of lunch meat that actually was 8.5 oz.

    As I said, I won't weigh everything. That's why I am looking at how far off the weight tends to be. This way, I can compensate by adding X% more grams/calories.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    edited March 2017
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    tgcake wrote: »
    earlnabby wrote: »
    Weigh everything, but 100 grams is 100 grams and if you enter the correct weight, you will be good. The issue comes with single serving packages. In order to not short the consumer, most are slightly more than their stated weight. I bought an 8 oz package of lunch meat that actually was 8.5 oz.

    As I said, I won't weigh everything. That's why I am looking at how far off the weight tends to be. This way, I can compensate by adding X% more grams/calories.

    There isn't going to be a standard amount you can factor in for how much something is over. Some foods are really accurate, some are very inaccurate. It's going to be very individual to your personal food selections.

    exactly. The only way to know is to weigh. Your 5 crackers can be off by as much as 20%, either under or over. My sandwich bread has 40 grams per slice and they actually are as small as 36 grams and as big as 45 grams.
  • tgcake
    tgcake Posts: 59 Member
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    earlnabby wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    tgcake wrote: »
    earlnabby wrote: »
    Weigh everything, but 100 grams is 100 grams and if you enter the correct weight, you will be good. The issue comes with single serving packages. In order to not short the consumer, most are slightly more than their stated weight. I bought an 8 oz package of lunch meat that actually was 8.5 oz.

    As I said, I won't weigh everything. That's why I am looking at how far off the weight tends to be. This way, I can compensate by adding X% more grams/calories.

    There isn't going to be a standard amount you can factor in for how much something is over. Some foods are really accurate, some are very inaccurate. It's going to be very individual to your personal food selections.

    exactly. The only way to know is to weigh. Your 5 crackers can be off by as much as 20%, either under or over. My sandwich bread has 40 grams per slice and they actually are as small as 36 grams and as big as 45 grams.

    Well, if it's +/- 20%, then that's easy? I can just assume it's 20% over. If it's 20% under at times, that would just mean a bigger deficit every now and then which isn't a bad thing.

    Weighing everything is not an option for me, that's why I'm looking for something that would give me an idea of how much I should overestimate by. Doesn't need to be accurate, like I said, but just needs to be an average.
  • neldabg
    neldabg Posts: 1,452 Member
    edited March 2017
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    It differs by brand and product really. From my experience, for example, Combat Crunch bars will vary by weight a lot, Chef Boyardee soup is often less than two servings a can, and Laughing Cow Cheese wedges are so consistent, I don't weigh them anymore. You can always weigh items for only a month or so and calculate yourself just how much packaged foods you eat vary.
  • annacole94
    annacole94 Posts: 997 Member
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    Or just decide it doesn't matter until it matters. My logging isn't 100% accurate, but my weight loss is good enough for me, so why would I put more effort into it?

    It either matters (so weight it) or it doesn't (so ballpark it and assume things average out). You can't have it both ways.
  • daj150
    daj150 Posts: 815 Member
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    You can't put a weighting on that. There are no standards in US food manufacturing for that, so it can be spot on or grossly off by well more than 20% +/-. When I first got into tracking food, I didn't weigh anything and just went off recommended serving and had great success. Once I started getting to a point where I wasn't losing weight anymore, I switched to weighing food and that made a world of difference.
  • lulalacroix
    lulalacroix Posts: 1,082 Member
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    I weigh all of my food, even the packaged products. The discrepancies I have found are so marginal that I often question why I even weigh these things. I think there has only been 1 or 2 times that the difference was large. And most of the foods seem to come in under the printed amount, not over.

    That being said, I realize my experience so far is not everyone's.
  • kgirlhart
    kgirlhart Posts: 4,993 Member
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    Some will be over and some will be under. If you aren't going to weigh them then I would just use the listed information. That is going to be the average.
  • JenHuedy
    JenHuedy Posts: 611 Member
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    Are you getting the results you want? If yes, then don't worry about it. If no, either reconsider weighing or recalculate your calorie goal based on your results. For example, if you averaged a .5lb per week loss over the last month but your calculated deficit should have been 1 lb/week then your logging is off by approx 250 cals per day and you should recalculate your goal.
  • RandiNoelle
    RandiNoelle Posts: 374 Member
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    My problem with weighing single serve foods is, I normal bring them to work with me or buying them on the go. I'm not taking them out of their nifty little containers/packaging to weigh it before I head out. I figure its close enough. It hasn't caused any damage to my weight loss progress so I'm not going to worry about it.

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