Calorie Count Accuracy Causing Dieting Issues

As a consumer, when you purchase something you expect to get exactly what the label says. For example, when you order a burger at a fast food joint that is listed as containing 500 calories, you expect the 500 calories and no more. However, you may actually be getting a lot more than that. The same may also be true of the entrees you can get at a sit-down restaurant, and the frozen dinner with the label that you examine so carefully before you toss it in your cart to take home.

According to a new study that was published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, prepared foods may actually contain an average of 8 percent more calories than their labels own up to and restaurant meals may contain a surprising 18 percent more. Even worse than that, as far as the Food and Drug Administration regulations are concerned, they say this discrepancy is perfectly O.K.

The new findings are the result of research conducted by Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University, and Jean Mayer, from Tufts’ USDA Human Nutrition Research Center of Aging. It was Roberts who first initiated this study, and it was her own struggles with weight that got her started. As author of the book, The Instant Diet, Roberts was working on some new recipes for the paperback version (renamed The “i” Diet) and, as was her practice, used herself as the guinea pig. As her rule, she lost the weight on the menu plans she recommended to readers, but when she redeveloped some of the meals using what were supposed to be calorically equivalent restaurant or supermarket foods, the weight loss came to a halt. Just as suspiciously, she stated that she always felt full. “I went into the lab and said, ‘I don’t believe these calorie numbers,’” she said. “So we went out and started collecting foods and sampling their contents.”

All together, she studied 10 frozen-food products and 29 restaurants, taking care to select the foods that people dieting would most likely choose, which meant they were said to contain 500 or fewer calories. In restaurants, they choices were among the lowest-calorie items on the menus. When back in the lab, Roberts’ test revealed the high-calorie truth, and the numbers were much more troubling than an ordinary dieter would appreciate.