The Problem with Nutrition Labels and Macros

Probably once a week I see a post from somebody that’s a rookie to counting calories asking how the calories on the label don’t add up. Well, there are two very simple answers if you are in the US: the product is mislabeled (intentionally or not) or they are following the FDA labeling standards and regulations and making the product more desirable to nutrition conscious people.

Addressing the first scenario, it isn’t a unique or unusual problem to have a product “mislabeled.” As other posts have explained far better than I can, the concept of a calorie is flawed. You can read about it here in Scientific American. The tl;dr version of why a calorie isn’t just a calorie can be summed up to just a few parts:

• Calories are measured in isolation, meaning with just that food. This does not account for what we have eaten previously or at the same time as our meal. By combining foods, like most people do, we change the time needed for digestion and how hard our body works to perform digestion. This changes the Thermic Effect of Food.
• Different people react to different foods differently and take different amounts of calories from them based on their unique body chemistry and gut bacteria. This blog post explains further based on a study done with mice.
• Calorie labels on prepackaged food are “averages” and may be higher or lower than your actual meal. Since many prepackaged foods are mixes of several different foods, the exact amount of each ingredient is rarely precise. When the amount of each food isn't precise combined with an inexact range of calories, chances are, you aren't getting what the label says. 

With the second issue, it’s a matter of the FDA giving more than a loophole, but leaving a canyon of ways to trick the consumer. Here are just a few of the ways labels can be manipulated to read as lower or more desirable.

• According to the FDA, if there are less than 5 calories per serving, the total calories can be declared as 0. That means if I create something like coffee creamer and claim a small serving size, like a tsp. and it has 4 calories, I can promote it as a 0 calorie product.
• If the product has 50 calories or less--Round to nearest 5-calorie increment: Example: Round 47 calories to “45 calories”
• If the product has above 50 calories--Round to nearest 10-calorie increment: Example: Round 94 calories to “90 calories”
• Alcohol brings up another anomaly to the calorie counter.  Carbs are 4 calories per gram, fat is 9, but alcohol falls in the middle at 7 calories per gram.
• Lastly, fat can be labeled as 0 fat when there is less than .5 g per serving. So a product with .4 g of fat per serving is fat free.

As you can see, there are a few ways a manufacturer can make a pre-packaged food into something it really isn’t and throw off your most dedicated efforts to eat on plan.

Let’s take a look at something many people use every day, coffee creamer. If we’re trying to be a macro-magician, we might be super concerned with the exact measures so we pick a “Fat Free International Delights”. On the left side, the Canadian label; on the right, the US label.


Same product, same calories listed… one label tells you their best average per serving and the other hides some information because the FDA allows it through rounding.

Let’s take this further. Since there are no restrictions on what is considered a serving size, one product can list a different serving size to make it seem more appealing. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it can add up over all your different meals throughout the week, especially if you don't check the serving sizes.

Italian Dressing	1 tbsp	2 tbsp
Calories	50	80
Fat	6g	7g
Carbs	1g	4g
Protein	0g	0g

If you’re grabbing one of these dressings off the shelf and you’re just looking quickly at the label for the one that reads the “healthiest”, you might overlook the serving size and go right to the nutrition counts. Take into account that very few of us ever use just 1 or 2 tablespoons and the 30 extra calories for 2 tbsp starts to add up. Yes, this is a small example, but it happens on a larger scale, too. Just imagine this with Peanut Butter or some other "treat" that you enjoy.

Moving on.

The calorie counting problem is a complex one complicated by a lack of precise labeling regulations in the US and the rounding of both macros and total calories. Further, the ability to manipulate serving sizes allows manufacturers create certain labels and make a less healthy product more appealing. If you really are going to be precise (which I don’t recommend unless you want to drive yourself crazy or are a top level competitor) you need to really read carefully and do the math instead of just trusting the companies that play within the rules to look better.

And if you want a better solution, give yourself a margin of error, say 4% of your total calories. On a 2,000 calorie diet, that’s 80 calories. At the end of the day, you might slow down your progress just a little bit, but you won’t drive yourself insane along the way.

Lastly, if you’re brand spanking new to healthy eating, take baby steps; start with just making some better food choices and just writing down what you eat. There will be a time to make things more detailed, but in the beginning, just get started!