Calorie Counts Not Adding Up

When you read a label to find out how many calories a particular food has you might not be getting the most accurate information.

It's not just restaurants but also some of the food items you buy at the grocery store---turns out, they have more calories in them than it says on the label.

First off, if you're trying to lose weight and are using calorie counting to help, congrats—that's one of the best ways to do it. But this latest news means you need to be even a little more careful. Researchers at Tufts University examined food items at both restaurants and frozen foods you can buy at a grocery store.

They purchases the items, took them to their lab and analyzed how many calories the items actually had. When they compared them to how many calories the menu or box said they had, they were surprised to find a big difference. Overall, the food items from restaurants had eighteen percent more calories than they were supposed to with some having four times as many, and frozen foods averaged eight times more calories.

These researchers are hoping this is a wake up call to food preparers to more accurately post calories numbers. But if your using their numbers now to diet, just realize you might be overshooting your goals, so you might need to cut back a little more to get the weight loss you want.