Popcorn question
 

I feel silly asking a simple calorie queston after all this time lol. After a year of counting, I should be giving the advice ;)
My microwave popcorn has me puzzled though. The whole bag is marked as 82 grams and half a bag is supposed to be 140 calories. It doesn't say the weight of a serving, just half. Its my "treat" and I like the stuff with a bit more butter than smart pop :D. Anyway, I would assume half the bag is 41 grams seeing how the whole thing is suposed to be 82g. I weighed out a serving and 41 grams was quite a bit more than half, close to 3/4 of the bag. I think this is because of the unpopped kernels. My question is, would this 41 gram serving still be 140 calories or should I weigh the whole bag and divide it in half. That would make a serving about 30 grams.. and less popcorn for me lol. I dont mind that but if I can eat the whole 41 grams for the 140 calories than I want the whole 41 grams ;)
What would you do?

I'd blame it on the unpopped kernels and eat the 41g of popcorn. The manufactureer can't determine how many kernels will pop at packaging. And anyway as my fearless WW leader Judy would say, "no one gets this big because of 5-10g of popcorn."

divide in half. maybe share with someone?

I keep hearing thing like "I never got fat on fruit, vegetables, popcorn, etc. The fact is that if they are excess calories for the day, we can get fat on them the same as anything else.

I spent a good 10 minutes at Walgreens the other day trying to figure this out! The servings were so confusing...I agree with the previous poster who said the weight you consume will vary because noone knows how many popcorn kernels will pop at your time of consumption. But...I still am not sure what to go by. It's probably better to go by cups in this case than weight.

Does your bag list those too? The ones I was looking at seemed to list grams for the unpopped entire bag and then cups for the popped servings. Maybe take the popped popcorn and measure out in volume (cups) half of it, and call that a 1/2 serving based on the calories on the bag for 82 grams?

I buy the kernels in a jar, measure out 3tbs, w/2tbs of olive oil and pop on the stove..then add "I can't believe it's not butter"..i get a good count this way.If I'm going somewhere,i just pop some and take it with me.

I do air popped, in fact, back in the day I used to eat a large bowl (1/2c unpopped kernals) with a 1/4 cup (yep a half a stick) of butter for dinner on a regular basis.

Some of the weight in microwave popcorn packets is the cooking oil/whatnot needed to make the corn pop.

I'm looking at my bag of Jiffy pop right now and it says that 2tblsp (33g) of kernals makes approx. 5 cups popped corn for 110 calories and 1 gram of fat.

So it sounds like the 140 for the 42g is correct.

If it ends up slowing you down or stalling you out, I'd switch to air popped with a few squirts of butter substitute or make your own microwave packets ala Alton Brown http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/a...ipe/index.html

Susan: I agree that a calorie is a calorie so excess calories can come from everywhere. I've just found anecdotally that most people got to their start weights eating processed foods, junk (sugary) food and mega sized portions. However, my sample size is small.

sweetnlow: don't forget to update us on what you decide about that popcorn :)

Thanks everyone for the help :) I think I will just go with the 41g as one serving. It means I have a little more than half a serving left over for the next day. I figured that there are some unpopped kernels weighed in my serving as well so it will even out in the end lol.

Thanks again