Calorie labels - rounding errors and significant figures

My chemistry teacher says that when a food package says "100 calories", it
could be anything up to 149 calories because 100 only has 1 significant figure.
This means if you're on a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet, you could be eating as much
as 3,000 calories without knowning. For me that's disgusting. So if you're
counting calories, be sure to take the worst case possibility into
consideration (i.e. 149 if it says 100, 24 if it says 20, etc ...)

Aplin17 wrote:

My chemistry teacher says that when a food package says "100 calories", it
could be anything up to 149 calories because 100 only has 1 significant figure.
This means if you're on a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet, you could be eating as much
as 3,000 calories without knowning. For me that's disgusting. So if you're
counting calories, be sure to take the worst case possibility into
consideration (i.e. 149 if it says 100, 24 if it says 20, etc ...)

I hate to respond to the troll, (whose teacher is wrong about which
digits are significant, by the way) but this raises an interesting
issue. I keep seeing "low carb" candy on sale. No fat, no protein...
shall I assume they're made of alcohol?

Our baby troll is right about one thing, though, very small portions
might have significant rounding errors. There are no calories in a
single Tic Tac. That doesn't mean you can feast on them all day long
and not get fat. (But I'd guess they get to call this pure-simple-sugar
item "low carb" for having carbs that round to 0 per portion!)

Dally

In article , Dally
wrote:

Aplin17 wrote:

My chemistry teacher says that when a food package says "100 calories", it
could be anything up to 149 calories because 100 only has 1 significant
figure.
This means if you're on a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet, you could be eating as
much
as 3,000 calories without knowning. For me that's disgusting. So if you're
counting calories, be sure to take the worst case possibility into
consideration (i.e. 149 if it says 100, 24 if it says 20, etc ...)

I hate to respond to the troll, (whose teacher is wrong about which
digits are significant, by the way) but this raises an interesting
issue. I keep seeing "low carb" candy on sale. No fat, no protein...
shall I assume they're made of alcohol?

Our baby troll is right about one thing, though, very small portions
might have significant rounding errors. There are no calories in a
single Tic Tac. That doesn't mean you can feast on them all day long
and not get fat. (But I'd guess they get to call this pure-simple-sugar
item "low carb" for having carbs that round to 0 per portion!)

Dally

You may also be interested to know that by law 2% of ingredients don't
have to be disclosed on lables. This is really fun for diabetics and
celiacs when it comes to juices and canned fruits.

--
Diva
******
There is no substitute for the right food

Yea, **** you. They should make it a law all calorie labels contain at least
three significant figures, (i.e. like 1320, 112, 1.24, 0.224, etc ...)

Yea, **** you. They should make it a law all calorie labels contain at least
three significant figures, (i.e. like 1320, 112, 1.24, 0.224, etc ...)