Actual amount of calories in the serving your receiving in prepackaged foods?!?!? The shocking, or not so shocking, truth

Well it probably wasn't the best decision to get a digital food scale, but I did anyway...

I started to examine the serving size of some of the prepackaged foods we eat.  And found that usually prepackaged candy, junk food, sports bars weigh more then the package says they do!

For ex. a fiber one bar says one serving 140calories at 40grams/bar (servings per package 1)- so we naturally assume that one package contains a 40gram/140calorie bar. 

Wrong, on average ever bar that I have weighed usually ends up being 45grams or more (upwards of 48grams).  Bringing the actual calorie count to 165+...  And its like this with almost every prepackaged food that I have weighed, the package contains more food then it says it does.  Not a big deal with a fiber one bar (extra measley 25 cals) but when your getting an extra 75-100calories per big texas cinnimon bun, thats a different story.

On the other end of the spectrum, canned foods, I have found contain less food then stated.  Del Monte canned peaches contains 3.5 servings at 121grams per serving (423.5 grams of peaches per can..)  But when I remove the peaches and weight them they usually alwayss end up weighing less then 325grams total!!!  The canned veggies are even worse, they say that the can contains 3.5 servings but after its weigh in, it contains more like 2.5 servings or less....

Slight variations don't bother me too much, because I am trying to gain, but I hate it when the general public is deceived like this.  Just feels like I am being lied to, and that makes me mad, not the fact that I am getting slightly more or slightly less.

I don't know what do you think?

I don't think people should be eating canned peaches or Fiber One bars, period.

What's wrong with canned peaches?  (In water not syrup)  Where I live, that's the only way you can get peaches for most of the year.

Do you weigh canned foods with or without the juices? I'm pretty sure the can's nutritional info is stated for the whole product, juices included.

As far as weighing food to know their exact calories: why does it matter? Even if you were trying to lose weight (which I'm aware you are not) you shouldn't be so exact. Do you plan to weigh foods and count calories forever? It is possible to stay thin and not measure. I have recovered from an eating disorder, and I no longer measure foods. But hey, I didn't explode and get fat. Look at food as more as fuel rather than a number. :)

Well I can't keep fresh fruit around because for me I have found it costs more, and two, can't afford the risk if it goes bad.  I am constantly traveling...

As for the fiber one bars, I just can't resist them....

But thats not the point, and I am not the point here either.  BTW I don't plan on counting forever, I just couldn't pass up the bargin I got on the scale...  This isn't about me though, so please don't make it that way.

I don't really know what the point of this post was to be honest, I just was very surprised by the differences, and wanted to see if you guys would be as surprised as I was. 

i am surprised

^^ lol.. 

I am often surprised, though I don't go so far as to weigh out a Fibre 1 bar....but not too long ago I bought a bag of whole wheat buns and the nutritional info provided was for "1 bun (50 g)". The calories were quite low and it seemed too good to be true, these were very large buns, so I weighed one and it turned out to be 120g. Ha. Since the info on nutritional labels is not regulated, there is no guarantee they are correct. I have gotten a pretty good sense of the right ballpark for most things, the rest I try not to sweat. Though I was pretty pissed when a label on some hot sauce claimed 5 calories per tsp and 10g of fat. LOL that's messed up

Fiber one bars were initially experiment, a test because of my curiosity and compulsive nature.  But when he first bar I weighed was almost 10grams more then the said value I started to weigh more foods, to see what was the average in each group.

food in wrappers (candy bars, etc) generally weighed more

canned foods generally weighed less

breads were pretty spot on

meats (pork chops, steaks, etc. from the grocery store) usually weighed significantly more

However I personally try not to weigh anything out, don't want to develop another bad habit.  But it certainly was an interesting experiment.

The peaches used in canned peaches aren't grown in North America.  They come from places like South Africa.  We don't what kind of fertilizers and pesticides they're using on them.  For example, they still use DDT there.  Is DDT getting into our peaches?  Cans may be lined with plastics like Bisphenol A and often are.

Canned peaches in juice, not syrup are good for you.

I don't think they count the calories of the fiber yielding ingredients of the fiber one bars. We don't absorb them. We don't have the right enzymes and such to break down the fiber. But they would still show up in the weight.

Then again, that might be wrong.

Original Post by duckie611:

I don't think they count the calories of the fiber yielding ingredients of the fiber one bars. We don't absorb them. We don't have the right enzymes and such to break down the fiber. But they would still show up in the weight.

Then again, that might be wrong.

 hmmm, each bar contains 9 grams of fiber, so that might explain the constant weight increase, I have even tried weighing the smaller looking bars and they are always over 40g's...

As for the peaches, I know must of you are not fans of splenda, but I usually buy the no sugar added del monte peaches, slightly sweetened w/ splenda...  no where near the great taste of a real peach, but i think they taste alright

Original Post by victoriagirl:

Though I was pretty pissed when a label on some hot sauce claimed 5 calories per tsp and 10g of fat. LOL that's messed up

 Isn't hot sauce mostly vinegar?  This must have been a typo on the label, lol. 

 I can't think of anything you could put in a tsp serving of hot sauce to make it have 10 g of fat. 

Unless it's spicy olive oil or hot n' heavy cream, lol.  Was it perhaps the stuff from the asian market?  I've noticed asian import products often have mathematically impossible nutrition labels.

I see that some people think the discrepancy is petty.

As someone who tries to get a fairly reasonable estimate of how many calories I eat everyday, this makes me mad and screws up my math.

Im with you Saint - if its true that there is a widespread pattern of purposefully misrepresenting serving sizes on the outside of boxes, I think this is a big deal and the FDA (or whoever regulates this stuff) needs to start doing a better job of verifying labels.

Nutrition labels and ingredient lists are in place to protect the consumer. I LOVE the fact that we have them and I hope that the food industries take the system seriously.

Legally, in the UK at any rate, the nutrition information on packets has to be only 80% accurate.  The stated weight on packets has to be a minimum. ... this usually means that manufacturers will overfill rather than underfill to be on the safe side.  (The weight of canned goods is total weight unless the label states 'drained contents')  What constitutes a 'portion' is completely arbitrary...

Combine the two... slightly inaccurate nutrition info x overfilled packet... and you can quickly get quite a big discrepancy.   Not enough to make people overweight I don't think - that requires fairly sustained overeating - but still a discrepancy

I have to say, that's part of why I don't rely on packaged foods much and prefer to make my own foods as often as possible.   I like to know what's going into my meals and, calories aside, I don't think all the hidden extras in a lot of packaged foods do us any good if we eat too many of them.