February 5, 2010 
This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Food, General health, Information, Weight loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, researchers found that calories stated on fast food menu items tended to be inaccurate, averaging 18% MORE CALORIES per item than listed in the menu. Example: Wendy’s grilled chicken wrap listed 260 calories, but was found to have 344 (a 32% overage).
” Some individual restaurant items contained up to 200% of stated values and, in addition, free side dishes increased provided energy to an average of 245% of stated values for the entrees they accompanied. These findings suggest that stated energy contents of reduced-energy meals obtained from restaurants and supermarkets are not consistently accurate, and in this study averaged more than measured values, especially when free side dishes were taken into account. If widespread, this phenomenon could hamper efforts to self-monitor energy intake to control weight, and could also reduce the potential benefit of recent policy initiatives to disseminate information on food energy content at the point of purchase.”
If a supposedly 2000 calories-a-day diet is actually 18% higher in calories, that means 2360 calories or an extra 360 calories a day consumed. Since every 3500 calories are equivalent a pound to our body weight, approximately every ten days we’d gain one pound of body weight. In one month, we’d be up 3 lbs. In one year, a whopping 36 pounds!
So enjoy your meals but don’t overdo it! But here is help if you do.
