Foiled by sneaky calories?                                     

            Precise calorie counting is an exercise in futility. The method used to determine the energy content of foods was developed more than a century ago. It’s valuable for research studies in the field of nutrition but it’s only a rough guide when it comes to helping us to decide what kinds of foods and how much to eat.

            Whether it’s on a restaurant menu or a can of soup or a package of breakfast cereal, the number that’s listed for calorie content will vary by several percent – usually on the high side – depending on various factors. Government regulations only add to the confusion.

            You may have noticed that calorie values are always given in round numbers. That should be a clue that precision is not an issue. Because federal regulations stipulate that the weight of a food product has to be no less than 99 percent of the number printed on the label, manufacturers are likely to err on the positive side. The difference is about 8 percent for packaged foods. In a study of restaurant foods the actual number of calories in the average entree was 18 percent above that listed on the menu. The calorie content of the food that you eat at home can only be guessed at. We pour cereal or fruit juice, we don’t measure it. The banana or apple that you ate last week might have been 20 percent larger than the one you ate today. Throwing an extra slice of ham or Swiss cheese on a sandwich can easily raise the calories by 10 percent. 

            If those differences don’t seem like much, consider that adding one-half percent to a 2,000-calorie diet amounts to more than 3,600 calories in a year.  That’s how many calories there are in a pound of fat. Another round number, of course.

            Nutritionists now realize that not everyone extracts the same number of calories from a given food. That varies with our genetic pattern as well as the kinds of beneficial bacteria that we have living within our intestines. The caloric value of meat varies with the fat content. Different varieties of vegetables vary in the calories they contain per ounce.

            You can overcome the confusion by avoiding refined sugar and flour as well as well-marbled, i.e., fatty, cuts of meat. Eat more veggies. If you’re trying to lose weight, make your serving sizes smaller. Trust your body to count the calories.