Calories: It just doesn't add up!
 

Once upon a time, I learned that in foods a gram of protein has 4 calories, and a gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories. And lo and behold, for a lot of foods I can look at the nutritional info and add them up and get about those totals.

Lately I've been noticing this isn't true, though, and the 'biggest offenders' seem to be in foods that are high in fiber. Now, I don't do low-carb but don't some diets discount fiber in figuring out how many carbs are in something? Does that have something to do with it?

This came up for me today because I bought Thomas' light English muffins. They promise 8 grams of fiber. Too chewy for me, I won't get them again, but the nutrition was what got me. They say they're 100 calories. But they also say they have 1 gram of fat (9 calories), 22 carbs (88 calories), and 7 protein (28 calories). So that adds up to 135 calories, which is substantially more than 100! Well, okay, 35% more than 100, but that definitely adds up.

So what's the deal? Are people computing calories differently lately? Can my calorie-counting self not just go and look at calorie counts anymore?

I believe you are right in your guess that they don't count the calories from the fiber. Fiber just goes right through you so they don't count it on a lot of packages (the 8 grams of fiber would be 32 calories which would make sense). Also, all of those numbers on the package are rounded off so when they calculate it could be slightly different than if you figured it out (so if it says 7 grams of protein it may actually be 7.2 grams or 7.3 and they round it to 7).

That's my opinion, someone might say something different but that's what I think!
Good luck!
Amber

On a Denise Austin video I used to have she said to eat fiber because it burns x amt of calories (can't remember how many now, 7 maybe or 10?) so maybe that is why they subtract for fiber? still seems dishonest to me though.

Man. If some packages are going to subtract fiber calories, and some not, that's going to get confusing for someone who counts calories. Wouldn't the FDA or someone regulate this? Strange.

well fiber, soluble and insoluble, never gets absorbed by your body--thus no calories. (soluble forms a gel-like substance in the GI tract... insoluble stays intact the way it is, but both gets excreted 100%).

For example--a half-cup of brussel sprouts has 6.8g carbs, 2.0g protein, and .4g fat - by calculation it shouldbe about 39 calories--but it's actually registered as 30 calories because 2.3g of the carbs come fiber that doesn't get absorbed ("Nutrition for Life" book)

Even though fiber doesn't get absorbed, it helps you stay regular. Don't overdo it though (esp. with fiber supplements) as that can actually be counter-productive and in worst-case scenarios, clog your GI tract.

Usually the nutrition facts labels are the most accurate source of information calorie-wise.

You can think of it this way. Technically wood is mostly carbohydrate, but if you swallowed five grams of sawdust, the calories in it would not be used because we cannot digest the carbs in wood. So we could say sawdust has no calories, but technically that is not true, as some critters can and do digest wood.

Colleen