Weigh Your Food
 

I try to weigh my food whenever possible because I have a tendency to be a bit too generous with a "tablespoon" or a "cup" (rounding them, if you know what I mean), and besides, the "tare" feature on my scale makes it easy to add items without dirtying a measuring spoon or cup. Recently, though, I found another important reason to weigh food: inaccurate labeling. Here's an example: I bought some Alexia crinckle-cut sweet potato fries. On the nutritional label, it says that 3 oz. or approximately 30 pieces are 160 calories. I weighed out a portion and 3 oz amounted to just 8 pieces (and each fry was not by any means extraordinarily long. Some were even smaller than average). That's quite a difference! If I were to have just counted out the portion, even if I were being conservative and counted out 20 pieces, I would still have eaten more than double the calories.

Another example is a bag of spicy chickpeas I bought from Trader Joes the other day. The package says that there are 2 servings per package (I can't remember the calorie count). When I weighed out a portion, though, it turns out that there are at least three servings per package. That means, eyeballing the portion by estimating 1/2 the package as a serving would result in, again, more calories.

I know that my scale is accurate because I actually have two scales (long story), and both indicate the same weights when I've tested them.

I'm cynical, but I cannot help but think that this is not an innocent mistake. Knowing how people today look at nutritional labels more and more, it seems as if the marketers are purposly under-reporting the calories ("coincidentally" I've never come across a situation in which the opposite occured---i.e., the serving size was actually more than the corresponding weight listed).

So, the lesson here is weigh your food.

Interesting Lin. Thanks for the tip. I actually never questioned a nutritional label, but I will certainly check my old standbys

Ugh, this makes me sick. -___- I don't have a scale, and am not able to get one anywhere in the near future, so that sucks. I have to go by the portion sizes they label. I guess the upside is that I eat on the lower end in terms of calories, so I guess I'm still not overeating... bah. -___-

Makes me wonder how many of those "Lean Cuisine" frozen meals are actually as low calorie as they say.

This is really bothersome to me! Isn't there some kind of law that requires accurate reporting? Thanks for sharing, Lin. We need to always stay on top of this sort of thing to make sure we are getting accurate info.

Wow, what a difference!! Measuring scales are so important and this really shows why. I can't believe there was that much of a difference from the label to the scale. Scary.

I'm planning to Email the companies in which I've noticed the problem. There probably is a law but I'm not sure who handles it. It's definitely deceptive advertising.

Good. This is craziness!

I'd trust Lean Cuisines more than regular foods because their reputation depends on the accuracy of their calorie counts.

I do so love measuring my food for accuracy, and a lot of the time it saves me clean-up, too!

I just had a question about those fries you mentioned. This is probably going to sound VERY silly... but did you weigh them when they were still frozen or after they were cooked? I imagine that still frozen would weigh a little bit more.

Yep----I would never have bought those sweet potato fries if I knew one serving was less than 10 fries.

RI weighed them frozen so you may be right but I still dont think that would account for almost 4 times less than the stated serving.

Actually, I think you might be surprised. I think the difference in moisture weight after baking in the oven would be pretty huge. They may still be a bit off, but companies are allowed 20% wiggle room when it comes to the accuracy of the calorie count in their serving sizes.

I weigh everything as well--so I totally get your frustration. There are still some thing that I weigh, and check the calorie count on calorieking (I really like their site because you can opt to weigh in grams), and think, "really? that much cabbage for only 16 calories?" It is a great tool, but it still messes with my head sometimes. But, I'd rather be accurate, than wondering!

I have been measuring a lot lately. However, I never thought to measure my snacks too much. Thanks for the headsup. I will start doing that. Even if it's just to get an idea of my main staple snacks.
Thank you!!

I'm surprised the sweet potato fries were off by so much - maybe the weight on the bag was for cooked fries? I try to go by the servings on the package - but I see you mentioned the chickpeas were off by the serving size too! hmmm... I'll have to get back into weighing things more often; I used to just weigh vegetables and protein and such.