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.
Anyone know?
They round it.
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).
Five calories ain’t all that significant in a 2000 calorie daily diet, tho. It’s only a quarter of one percent. Barely measureable.
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.
Yep. Most common foods now have a reference amount set by the FDA.
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.
Which explains how milk can have different numbers of calories depending on which kind of cereal you pour it on.