Is this right?

  • So I am looking at a bag of Extra Butter Microwave Popcorn...
    It says: 3 TBS unpopped is 160 calories and 1 Cup popped is 35 Calories.
    There are 3 servings in a bag: so there is only 105 calories in a bag? Of Extra Butter Popcorn?????

    It seems too good to be true, but that is what it says...
    What do you think?
  • No because a serving is more than one cup. I believe it's two (making 6 cups in a standard size bag) so it would be 210 calories which still isn't bad. The nutrition info on popcorn is confusing, the numbers never seem to work out. I just went and bought the stuff that's in 100 calorie bags. No math to figure out
  • Hence why I bought a hot air popper, and pop my own and then can regulate my own butter and salt intake on it..... Haha! Less complicated that way!
  • I'm pretty sure they mean the bag has 480 calories, assuming that all of it pops and all of the butter topping distributes, which it never does. A popped bag with kernels left over probably has like 9-10 cups in it, plus it's possible that while legally they have to work out the calories that they put in the bag for the nutrition label, they might have measured the calories in an edible cup's worth for the second column, which excludes all that butter topping that gets encrusted on the side and those unpopped kernels.

    I don't have a box of popcorn handy, but I think they say "serving size: 3 tbsp. unpopped, servings per container: 3" on the top, which is like the "technically speaking" part, and then they include the information for the popped corn by cup for your reference to measure out cups, not to indicate that 1 cup is a serving size. If I *really* wanted to know the exact count, I would try measuring how many cups come out of the bag when it's done and multiplying that by 35 calories per cup, since it probably works out to more like 380-400 that way.

    (Okay. I overanalyze!)
  • zizania, holy cow! You must drink a lot of coffee.

    Again....the 100 calorie bags...
  • Quote: zizania, holy cow! You must drink a lot of coffee.
    None, actually! It's true, I'm just naturally this way .