I recently went to a local grocery store to buy some cheese. Not just any cheese, my favorite cheese, provolone!. Anyway... I picked up the package from Kraft, and read the label. ut wait, the store brand was cheaper, so I checked that label. They were exactly the same. Same serving size, same fat grams, same calories from fat, same carbs, same protein, Everything the same, except the calories!
Quick math, fat calories are 9 calories per gram, both had 5 grams of fat, both state on the label “Calories from fat 45”. Great, adds up. Neither product has any carbs, so moving on. Calories from protein are 4 calories per gram. Both have 5 grams of protein, or 20 calories, for a total of 65, right? Wrong (apparently), as one said it had 70 total calories (5 higher than the math dictates) and one said 60 total calories (5 lower than the math dictates).
Now, these are universally understood numbers, but further proof they aren’t using different math, one them printed the calories per gram chart right on the label!! How can this be!?
These important categories the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allow to have discrepancies are called “Type III Nutrients”, they include calories, sugars, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium. All of these items are permitted to be “off” by up to 20%. For an example, if an item is said to have 100 calories and actually has 119 calories, that’s within the allowed margin of error for the FDA nutrition label guidelines. Now, this isn’t to say there is a flaw with the guidelines, I’m not a chemist and don’t know how hard it is to get a truly accurate laboratory result on these numbers, but this is something we all as consumers need to be aware of. If every food someone ate, that was on a strict 2,000 calorie diet, was over by 20%, they would consume an extra 400 calories a day. That can add up to 48 extra pounds per year, all from eating within your calorie goals.
The modern American nutrition label was mandated for most food products under provisions of a law passed in 1990. The law required food companies to begin using the new food label on packaged foods beginning May 8, 1994. The charts and tables and guidelines though change much more frequently. One case in point, currently the fat grams rounding guidelines states that if a food has less than .5 grams of fat per serving, it may be rounded down to zero. But what about a food that has multiple servings per package and has laboratory tests stating the food has .45 grams (which as we have learned can actually be as high as .54 grams with the allowed margin of error)? They have to show that, right? Nope. A food package with ten servings of food and a laboratory tested food of only .45 grams per serving would actually have 4.5 grams of fat in the package, or (as we’ll go over later) an extra 40 calories. It doesn’t seem like much, but it can add up and throw off our intake if we don’t know to be aware, especially when we’re buying in bulk at a warehouse club.
The FDA has fine-tuned the label to be a consistent format, font and design to ease the reading process. Below is the official FDA nutrition label guide.
As you can see, it literally shows what items you should “limit” and which ones you should ensure proper volumes of. The labels let us know what size a serving is, and how many grams of fat, carbs and protein are in each of those servings. Now, it’s important to note that they also list how many servings are in a package. This, unfortunately, can be the most deceiving item of all. Not just because you will sometimes read a label for a food you would normally eat the whole package of and then notice it contained four servings of what you read, no. The most dangerous issue is how inaccurate the servings can be in the first place. It’s a lengthy table and chart, but the FDA guidelines have formulas upon formulas on how manufacturers are to list foods. These include lots of rounding, clauses and loopholes. At the end of the day, it’s truly safest to weigh the food yourself. I know this isn’t easy, takes more time and effort, and can prohibit you from trying new foods “on the fly”, but to truly monitor your intake, it is helpful, and only needs to be done once to give you a good sense. Take your favorite snack and put it on the scale. Use the very valuable and good information you have found on the label to multiply the fat, carb and protein’s per serving by how much you are actually eating. Unfortunately, often times what you find may surprise you!
So, the upside, the labels will help you determine what the real values are, even if the weights listed aren’t 100% of what you thought they were. The labels will also tell you right away what the food is. What do I mean? Well, which of the three primary nutrient types (fats, carbs and proteins) does the food get its calories from? How to tell if what you’re eating is a fat, carb or protein? What nutrient makes up the biggest percentage of calories? Quick reference: carbs and proteins produce 4 calories per gram while fat produces 9 calories per gram. So, if a food had 10 grams of fat, 10 grams of carbs and 10 grams of protein, it is a fat by a large margin. In fact, the fat is more than the carbs and protein combined.
10g fat x 9 Calories each = 90 Calories
10g carbs x 4 Calories each = 40 Calories
10g protein x 4 Calories each = 40 Calories
I recently saw a “protein drink” that bragged about its great taste and high protein, 20grams worth. That’s great, except it had 40 grams of carbs and 2 grams of fat. It wasn’t a “protein drink”, it was a carb drink! The good news is we don’t have to rely on the whole label to help us. By knowing some basic truths (how many calories are in fats, carbs and proteins) and how much a serving weighs, we can truly determine, with more accuracy, what we are putting into our bodies.
At the end of the day, I’m thankful for the nutrition label guidelines we have in the United States. Though the numbers may sometimes be off, they are within a guideline, and can help us monitor our intake and ensure we are getting enough of what we need, and not too much of what we don’t. They help us get a sense for what is a fat food, a carb food or a protein. Reading labels is much like everything else we do to maintain our health, it’s a tool, and when we put together all of the tools in the right fashion, we build ourselves a strong structure that can house us for a good and long healthy life.
Brian Jagger is an ACE Certified Personal Trainer who used to top the scales at well over 300lbs. He has lost the excess fat, become fit and now works as a personal trainer/fitness coach and part-time working actor on various TV and film projects. Jagger is also the co-host of the fitness for all focused podcast “FitBody Radio” which can be heard live weekly at FitBodyRadio.com or via podcast through the itunes store.
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