Why calorie discrepancy?

clskeate
clskeate Posts: 3 Member
in Food and Nutrition

My WW tracker shows 7 oz of canneloni beans as 500 calories. This app says over 700 calories. The can says 240 calories. ?????

Replies

  • COGypsy
    COGypsy Posts: 1,472 Member

    Always go with product packaging. The MFP database is largely crowdsourced which means you're looking at entries that anyone could have added at any time with any information they care to enter. Entries may be outdated, could be the same product in another country, or just a bad entry. Best to either find an entry that matches the package or else just create a new food with the correct info.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 37,969 Community Helper

    The food database here is mostly crowd-sourced, entered by regular users like you and me . . . except not all of them were super-meticulous when they did that entry.

    When picking entries here, choose ones that match the can/package in your hand, which has higher odds of being accurate. (Though canned beans often include the fluid that surrounds the beans in their calorie calculations, so draining/rinsing them may change the actual average calories per unit of volume or weight.) For non-packaged foods, pick entries that are described accurately for your case: Cooked vs. raw, drained vs. not, boiled vs. roasted, etc.

    Note, too: If you used the bar code scanner, that's still an entry that a regular user typed in. It's not a direct pipeline to current, accurate information from the manufacturer. I never use the scanner, personally. I find it easier to get accurate entries if I type in a search.

    Another option is to cross-check with a reliable external source, like this one:

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/

    For canned beans, which I usually drain and rinse, I use entries that match the data there for the same type of beans that have been boiled & drained.

    This sounds like a lot of work, but after we log a food once, it will stay in our MFP recent/frequent foods and come up first when we go to add a food to our diary, as long as it's a thing we eat semi-frequently. That makes it an investment in long-term success to cross-check entries at first so the recent/frequent list has accurate entries in it.

  • clskeate
    clskeate Posts: 3 Member

    Thanks everyone. I'm new to this app and still learning navigation. This app is not as intuitive as I expected.

  • rudyzenreviews
    rudyzenreviews Posts: 74 Member

    I am also new here…I am also go through this…I think it is database error.

  • lesdarts180
    lesdarts180 Posts: 3,532 Member

    It is not necessarily a database error (although there are plenty of those)

    Remember, cannellini beans (or any other beans) come in different forms:

    Dried beans will be approx 290 cals per 100g (translates to about 580 for 7 oz)

    Cooked, drained, beans - either home cooked or tinned and drained will be approx 100 cals per 100 g (200 cals for 7 oz)

    Lastly, if you buy a can of beans in water but don't drain them - ie weigh them with an indeterminate amount of virtually calorie- free water the cals per 100 g or per oz will be significantly less, I don't know how much because I never use them with the water.

    It does take time to understand how to use the database, but persevere, it is worth it.

    PS I do use the barcode scanner but I still check out what comes up. I'm in the UK and our food formulations are sometimes very different from the USA foods.

  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,760 Member

    I ran into this same problem with chickpeas, which are on the salad bar. I've been using MFP for 10 years and gotten past every hurdle, but figuring out how many kcals were in 1/4C of chickpeas on the salad bar was a research project!

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10937110/database-for-chickpeas

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