Today, nearly every packaged food you can find includes a on the label. These numbers describe how much energy your body gets from a particular bar of candy or box of cereal. And while the effectiveness of counting calories has been debated, for many, it’s a helpful weight loss tool. But can you really count on calorie labels?
The calories listed on labels come straight from the manufacturers — and are regulated by the FDA. But the agency allows for a 20 percent margin of error. Because of this, the caloric content is often higher than labeled, yet still within FDA limits. A 2013 study on the food label accuracy of snack foods found that their average caloric content was more than 4 percent higher than the calories listed. The researchers suggest this was because the foods contained more carbohydrates than listed.
Beyond that, the counts on labels can be ...
