[jenjen22]

I was going to have country style ribs for dinner. I looked it up on Calorie King it said 4oz. is 371 calories. On calorie count it said 1 piece is 477 calories ( I have no idea what 1 piece is equal to in calories). I have noticed when looking up other items that depending on what website I am on I get different calorie counts for the same items and amounts. Which site do you use and feel is the most accurate? Thanks for helping!

[ERHR]

No way to know for sure without conducting your own experiments! I usually go with sites that provide weight/volume measurements instead of "servings" and if there are many entries I look at them all and pick the median, more or less. I also use my own body's discretion now that I have a long history of calorie-counting - I can roughly tell how many calories I've consumed.

[kaplods]

If you're not fairly proficient with junior high and high school level math, this information may be too confusing to be helpful, so feel free to ignore it if you want (or even avoid reading it).

Because of the math issues I use an exchange plan to count calories (I'm pretty good at the math, I just don't want to do it every day).

Exchange plans are calorie counting by estimation (though I still have to look up calorie counts or calculate them from a nutrition label, if I can't find exchange value).

Instead of learning the calorie counts of foods, I learn the exchange values (using similar sources. There are books and online sites). I started learning the exchange plan when I was 8 years old, when I joined Weight Watchers with my mother (the youngest they allowed, with a parent being a member and a note from my pediatritian).

For me, it's easier than calorie counting, but maybe only because I learned it first. At any rate, all the foods within an exchange group have similar calorie, carb, fat, fiber, and protein counts (thus every dairy exchange will have 80 - 90 calories, every fruit 60 - 80, every bread/starch 60-80....)

As a result a 1500 calorie exchange plan will average 1500 calories per day (though it may actually fall between 1400 - 1600). When I've done the math to double check, I've found the calorie count to fall much closer than that, more like 1450 to 1550 - which isn't much if any more error than trying to counting calories individually.

Most of the exchanges are easy to memorize as well (because for most vegetable exchanges 1 veg exchange = 1 cup raw or 1/2 cup cooked; and for most breads 1 ounce = 1 bread.

It's easier for me to count, calculate, and plan a breakfast of 2 protein, 1 starch, 1 fruit, 1 dairy (about 350 - 360 calories). I can essentially eat the same breakfast every day without ever eating the same food twice.

Exchange plan calorie counting has the advantage of incorporating balanced nutrition (and there's an exchange plan or you can develop one for any concept of balance. For example I follow a reduced carb exchange plan that includes more protein exchanges and fewer bread and fruit exchanges than the standard diabetic exchange plan. Another advantage is that exchange plans (at least before electronic apps) made it easier (in the long run) to count and estimate new food values (by comparing them to the food they're most like). There are fewer electronic resources for exchange values than calorie counting, but there's also much less (almost no) discrepency between resources. No matter where I go, on every exchange counting website, half a large apple = 1 fruit exchange. Some foods can be counted two ways, so that's about the only discrepeancy I see (for example beans can be used to satisfy either bread or protein exchanges, or you can even split them half and half).

Direct one-to-one calorie counting has the advantage of being less restrictive, and (at least perecptiually) more accurate and precise. If you only care about calorie level, you can eat and may be able to lose weight on a diet of candy bars. There are also more electronic resources for calorie counting than for exchange plans (although that can be a disadvantage if you're not ok with the uncertainty of which source to use). It's also easier to deal with prepackaged foods with nutrition labels (although you can easily learn to translate any food label into exchanges. Many books and online resources will tell you how, and there are even apps that will do it for you).




When it comes to directly counting calories:


I agree that specific weight measurements are going to tend to me more accurate than vague measurements like "1 piece," but even when only using sources that include a weight measurement, you'll still see quite a bit of difference.

Most calorie counting resources are using the data from one lab. The apples one lab tested, even if of the same weight can have more or fewer calories than the same type of apples some other lab tested. Ripeness, soil nutrients, even how much sun and time of season the apples were picked can all affect calorie counts.

In that respect you can never tell if your 3 ounce Fuji apple is more like lab A's 3 ounce Fuji apple or more like lab B's 3 ounce Fuji apple.


Another source of calorie discrepancy is with fruits and vegetables, because fiber is a carbohydrate that can burn, and therefore contains calories (calories is a unit of potential heat energy - how much energy is given off when the material is burned). So anything that can burn, technically has calories. But fiber is a carb that humans cannot digest, and so the FDA allows food manufacturers to subtract those calories. Unfortunately, some do and some don't Likewise, some calorie counting resources subtract the cellulose (fiber) calories, and some do not (and most don't tell you whether or not they have). Ironically it always seems (if you check their math) that the healthiest foods are the least likely to have labels that reflect the "useable" calorie count in favor of the more technically accurate (but less useful for calorie-counting).

If you're a cow (because they can digest fiber) or if you're wanting to use the food on a bonfire, actual calories may be what you want - but for calorie counting, you want the useable calorie count (you want to have the undigestible calories subtracted from the total).

Because of this, you really have only a few options.

1. Look up 2 or 3 counts from 2 to 3 sources and split the difference or take the middle count.

2. Double check the math

The useable calorie count should equal

(fat grams x 9) + (total carb grams minus fiber grams x 4) + (protein grams x 4)

To make it more difficult sugar alcohols may or may not be digested or may be only partially digested - so some manufacturers count them as 0 calories, others count 1 or 2. But newer evidence suggests that some people are more able to digest sugar calories than others. Which means 1g of any given sugar alcohol may = 0 calories for you and 4 calories for me, and maybe 2 calories for someone else.