I have a simple question and I think I already know the answer but I wanted to be sure I have a box of Orville Redenbacher spicy nacho popcorn and the calorie count isn't adding up. The box says that one serving is half the bag at 42g. I weighed it last night and the entire bag popped was only 65g. There were less than 10 unpopped kernels left in the bottom. I went by the weight but I wonder if that is right. In my experience, when I go by weight I usually end up getting less so I feel like I am cheating by getting more popcorn per serving than the bag says I should . If the whole bag is only 60g, I can eat more than half for one serving. Am I right to go by weight?

On the same note, I am frustrated when the labels are misleading! I bought a bag of the new Kernels dill pickle popcorn at Walmart the other day. It said I could eat 5 cups for about 200 calories. I weight it out and I only ended up with about 2 cups for one serving . I won't be getting that again, it is not worth the calories since I like quantity when I have the munchies

I share your frustration with the discrepancies between weight vs. measures on products. That has happened to me many times. I do tend to go by weight usually because that just somehow seems as if it would be more accurate. However, I also usually err on the side of caution, and in the case of your popcorn, I would probably go by the higher calorie count (i.e., stick to the calorie count for 1/2 a bag rather than 42 gr)

Re: The popcorn, are they talking about popped or unpopped corn for the calorie count ?

I believe they are talking about popped since it says about 5 cups per serving, or half the bag, or 42g. All three measurements will give a different amount

What you could do is weigh the amount popped, divide by 2 and that would be the amount for 1/2 a bag serving. Then add up what the whole bag would be calorie wise and divide by 2? I don't know, popcorn pisses me off: it's just hard to calculate! So I feel your frustration!!!

I was curious, so I went to Orville's website and checked out the label for the spicy nacho popcorn. The label the website has says one serving is 39 grams unpopped or 4.5 cups popped. I'm guessing it's slightly different packaging than yours, but your box should be 42 grams unpopped and 5 cups popped. It may be that the whole bag popped only weighs 62 grams because some of mass is probably burned up and lost as energy in the popping process, or at least that's my guess.

But anyway, in my experience with popcorn, the weight measurements refer to unpopped (although I've also seen it measured in tablespoons), while cup measurements refer to popped.

I love when I find sentences here at 3FC that could only be understood here at 3FC.

As to the bags of popcorn, when the package states that it should yield "X" cups popped, then it yields 2 cups less....that is when popcorn pisses me off.

I think it isn't so many calories that I have to worry about popcorn. Generally I make the 100 calorie bags and if I want more because the chewing didn't satisfy me, I make one more bag. It doesn't happen often that I want the 2nd bag tho.

Maybe you should weigh it before it's popped.. The kernels weigh more before they've been popped.

I just stick to the 100 cal bags because there's no messing with numbers!