A cursory investigation in my kitchen has confirmed what my suspicions: Almost no mainstream packaged foods have numbers of calories per serving that don’t end in 0. I can think of two possible explanations for this:
They round it.
They put in just the right amount of food to get a nice clean calorie number. I can’t imagine how this could possibly be worth it for the companies.
Anything with less than 5 calories per serving is labelled as 0 calories. Anything else must be rounded to the nearest 5 calories until you get over 100 calories. Over 100 calories, you round to the nearest 10 calorie increment. cite
Huh. Thanks. I guess that’s the answer that makes the most sense, anyway, but I’m surprised they’re given so much leeway. Those magical rounded calories add up (or down).
If calories in a serving size is randomly distributed, then they pretty much cancel out. The 5 rounds up. So for every 10 servings, you have consumed on average one calorie less than advertised.
However, I would not put it past manufacturers to size their servings so that calories end in 4 so they can always round down.
Haven’t serving sizes been more rigorously regulated lately? I know at one time they played games with the serving size, but I believe recent (in the last 5-10 years?) rules limit what sizes can be used.
Do they also round the grams per serving of carbohydrates, protein and fat? I think I’ve seen foods where the 4C + 4P + 9F formula is further off from the calorie content than what WhyNot’s cite would allow.