There's no way some foods are zero calories right?
JayZ1488
Posts: 258 Member
I bought a bag of oh snap pickles
1oz serving size
3oz in bag
Zero calories.
I'm confused. You can't just say "hey there's no calories, I can eat as much as I want or can you. Are you burning off the calories quicker then you eat?
1oz serving size
3oz in bag
Zero calories.
I'm confused. You can't just say "hey there's no calories, I can eat as much as I want or can you. Are you burning off the calories quicker then you eat?
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Replies
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If a serving size has fewer than 5 calories many jurisdictions allow it to be marketed as calorie free. Your 3 oz bag probably has somewhere around 12 calories, or "0" per serving.14
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Thank you both! But Why? That's technically false advertisement. I like the count every calorie I consume so even if it's just 12 cal per bag that's more than zero2
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YepItsKriss wrote: »Because everything we do for weight loss is a guess. Nothing you log is exact. Even the number of calories per day MFP gives you is a guess, because there is a lot of factors individually that change our over all calorie burn.
Also for the most part for the general public, its unlikely that people would consume enough bags of these within a week to either ruin their weight loss goal or gain weight.. since it would take 291 packages of them to gain a pound after they reached maintenance.
Thank you again for the help!0 -
My general sense of the legality around advertising is that a lot of it is focused on preventing harm to the consumer, not trying to ensure that everything in the advertisement is 100% true. A lot of advertising can’t even be proven true or false - what does “best” mean, anyhow? Since calorie labeling always involves some guesswork, allowing nominal calories to be advertised at zero isn’t going to cause harm even if it isn’t completely true. I suppose we could call everything under five 1 calorie, or 3, but I don’t think it would make a real difference to anyone.3
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Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?5
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Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
Yes, our truvia is labeled zero calorie
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Because a government agency under the oversight of Congress is allowing companies to put something on their labels that you consider false advertising. For the ordinary citizen, one way they have to attempt to change something the federal government is doing that they don't like is to contact their congressional representatives (you have three: two senators and a member of the House). You could also try to start an online petition. The White House had a page for doing that online during the Obama administration. Not sure if it continues now.15 -
I bought a bag of oh snap pickles
1oz serving size
3oz in bag
Zero calories.
I'm confused. You can't just say "hey there's no calories, I can eat as much as I want or can you. Are you burning off the calories quicker then you eat?
You can look up a pickle and find out that there are calories.
A 1 oz dill pickle is about 3 calories. A 3 oz packet would be less than 10 calories. You can burn 10 calories fairly quickly with normal activity in less than 5 minutes. Most people probably are not going to eat very many pickles a day. This is probably not the food label inaccuracy to stress about.
There are a lot of foods that do not have calories listed. Most herbs and spices are used in quantities that the calories are extremely small and are not listed on the containers at all.
I have dried basil. No nutritional information on the container. The internet tell me that 1 T or 2 g would be 5 calories. That is a lot of dried basil even for a dish that would serve 6 people. I haven't ever seen a recipe wanting me to use that much per serving.
Should labels for all consumables to exact? Maybe. It is legal right now for them to say zero if a serving is less than 5 calories.
Is it going to keep you from managing your weight if you miss logging <10 calories of food sometimes? Not likely.
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Heck, even a long black has energy in it! Even if it's 4kj / 1 cal0
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Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
On the truvia web site they refer to their product as a zero calorie sweetener.
https://www.truvia.com/health/product-information/weight-management0 -
YepItsKriss wrote: »Because everything we do for weight loss is a guess. Nothing you log is exact. Even the number of calories per day MFP gives you is a guess, because there is a lot of factors individually that change our over all calorie burn.
^^THIS.
The weight of the package contents is also a source of inaccuracy. Is it really 1 ounce or is it 0.96 or 1.02. If 10000 samples were taken and the average turned out to be 2 or 2000 calories, THAT is what appears on the serving size. Yet perhaps only 1000 had that number; some with a bit more & some with a bit less.
It's just one of the things that comes out OK at the end of the week.
Lighten up a little.
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Thanks everyone! I appreciate the help.0
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Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
Yeah, not sure if it is just the United States or other countries as well but basically the rule is if it is less than 5 calories it is zero calories.
I mean if you really REALLY abused that rule I think you'd get called out on it.
For example if a 8 oz bag of potato chips claimed to have zero calories because it had 200 servings and each of those 200 servings was less than 5 calories I don't think that would fly.
But I mean diet soda's have some number of calories as well, probably like 2 or 3. They get away with "zero" calories because whatever it is its less than 5 in a serving.
I am pretty anal when I am calorie counting but that policy of rounding down to zero never really bothered me. I mean seriously if there are less than 5 calories in serving you are going to be very hard pressed to derail your diet on the basis of consuming those items.4 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
Yeah, not sure if it is just the United States or other countries as well but basically the rule is if it is less than 5 calories it is zero calories.
I mean if you really REALLY abused that rule I think you'd get called out on it.
For example if a 8 oz bag of potato chips claimed to have zero calories because it had 200 servings and each of those 200 servings was less than 5 calories I don't think that would fly.
But I mean diet soda's have some number of calories as well, probably like 2 or 3. They get away with "zero" calories because whatever it is its less than 5 in a serving.
I am pretty anal when I am calorie counting but that policy of rounding down to zero never really bothered me. I mean seriously if there are less than 5 calories in serving you are going to be very hard pressed to derail your diet on the basis of consuming those items.
I’m imagining 200 people sharing an 8oz bag of potato chips
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
Yeah, not sure if it is just the United States or other countries as well but basically the rule is if it is less than 5 calories it is zero calories.
I mean if you really REALLY abused that rule I think you'd get called out on it.
For example if a 8 oz bag of potato chips claimed to have zero calories because it had 200 servings and each of those 200 servings was less than 5 calories I don't think that would fly.
But I mean diet soda's have some number of calories as well, probably like 2 or 3. They get away with "zero" calories because whatever it is its less than 5 in a serving.
I am pretty anal when I am calorie counting but that policy of rounding down to zero never really bothered me. I mean seriously if there are less than 5 calories in serving you are going to be very hard pressed to derail your diet on the basis of consuming those items.
I remember a thread where someone was ranting that the cooking Spray can was lying cause it was 0 calories per serving even though it was pure oil.5 -
baconbutt1996 wrote: »Heck, even a long black has energy in it! Even if it's 4kj / 1 cal
I had to look up what a long black was. Now I want one.
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stevencloser wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
Yeah, not sure if it is just the United States or other countries as well but basically the rule is if it is less than 5 calories it is zero calories.
I mean if you really REALLY abused that rule I think you'd get called out on it.
For example if a 8 oz bag of potato chips claimed to have zero calories because it had 200 servings and each of those 200 servings was less than 5 calories I don't think that would fly.
But I mean diet soda's have some number of calories as well, probably like 2 or 3. They get away with "zero" calories because whatever it is its less than 5 in a serving.
I am pretty anal when I am calorie counting but that policy of rounding down to zero never really bothered me. I mean seriously if there are less than 5 calories in serving you are going to be very hard pressed to derail your diet on the basis of consuming those items.
I remember a thread where someone was ranting that the cooking Spray can was lying cause it was 0 calories per serving even though it was pure oil.
Hah yeah actually I can see that being abused. I looked it up thinking what brand I could think of and PAM cooking spray has a "serving" of 1/3 second of spray (so basically just a spritz). Looking up online a "serving" is 2 calories which means that technically they could call that zero calories. But yeah if you hold that sucker down and soak your pan it'll be more than that.
I guess you have to think now and again. Dang.
That said good luck getting fat on pickles.6 -
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If something is labeled zero calories, most times its because it takes more energy to digest it than the energy provided by the food itself.16
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zoekravitz wrote: »If something is labeled zero calories, most times its because it takes more energy to digest it than the energy provided by the food itself.
No. It means it has less than 5 calories per serving. There are no foods that take more energy to digest than they contain.
eta: But wouldn't that be awesome!
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zoekravitz wrote: »If something is labeled zero calories, most times its because it takes more energy to digest it than the energy provided by the food itself.
Wrong.
It's labelled 0 calories because it has less than 5 calories per serve and they're allowed to round down.
No food burns more calories digesting than you take in eating them and even if they did, for labels would never reflect that.1 -
zoekravitz wrote: »If something is labeled zero calories, most times its because it takes more energy to digest it than the energy provided by the food itself.
If such a thing existed you could just lose weight by eating a ton of that thing. Unfortunately (or fortunately) no such thing exists.0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »zoekravitz wrote: »If something is labeled zero calories, most times its because it takes more energy to digest it than the energy provided by the food itself.
If such a thing existed you could just lose weight by eating a ton of that thing. Unfortunately (or fortunately) no such thing exists.
In fact, if that were a thing, you'd lose weight faster gorging yourself on that food than if you were eating nothing at all.0 -
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Is this the case for all American foods? I have packets of truvia here, and on the label it states 0.4 calories per pack. If this was American would it say 0 calories?
Yeah, not sure if it is just the United States or other countries as well but basically the rule is if it is less than 5 calories it is zero calories.
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I can't speak for all other countries - but here in Australia this is not the case.
All foods/ drinks have nutritional information per 100ml or 100 g regardless of size of container.
They can optionally also show information for the container or for a serving but they must show the kilojoules per 100g or 100 ml
As Christine said above, her truvia was 0.4 calories.
And I know diet soda drink cans are about 3 calories per can
And their ads here cannot describe them as zero calories. Diet soft drinks here are marketed as zero sugar because that is true, not zero calories ( well, kilojoules in our metric system) because that is not true.
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