Fitday Vs. Food Labels

[Effie]

I've been using Fitday for a while, and I just ran into something today that I've never seen before.

I had sugar snap peas with my dinner last night, but I didn't see anything in fitday that was close. Regular peas were way too high. So, I entered it in as a custom food, but fitday "disagreed" with what I entered (directly from the nutrition facts on the label).

Serving Size: 1/2 cup cooked
Calories: 35
Fat: 0
Carbs: 7g (-3g fiber)
Protein: 2g

Fitday said that the calories should be 24 because I should deduct the fiber from the carbs. I know in the Atkins world, we always deduct fiber from our total carbs, but I've never seen a caloric adjustment based on fiber.

Ok, I just got back from a field trip to my pantry with a calculator. I have a can of baked beans which does count the fiber in the total calories. I also have a box of grape nuts that does not count the fiber in the total calories. I purposely picked two high fiber foods so I knew I'd be outside the margin of error. So what's the deal? Does every food have it's own formula for calculating nutritional information?

[Carolyn492]

I would like to know the answer to that one Effie... I am interested to see the answers to this one.. mind bashing..

[Isabeau]

I don't know how fibre would effect the caloric count on any food. I've never had a problem entering custom foods on fitday. My advice to you is enter the information exactly as listed on the packaging, don't start changing things. At the end of the day you can look at fitday and see everything you've eaten. You'll see gram count for fat, carbs and protein AND fibre. Just subract that to get your net carbs.

[Effie]

My advice to you is enter the information exactly as listed on the packaging, don't start changing things.

Well, see, that's what I did, and fitday wouldn't accept it. So, I was forced to either change the calories from 35 to 24, or else modify the carb count. Either way doesn't seem right to me, but fitday wouldn't accept it any other way. Hence, my predicament!

[cruiser gal]

I have had the same problem with customizing foods on fit day. So what I usually do is adjust the calorie count as they suggest, afterall we are not counting calories, as long as the carb and protein counts are accurate, i figure that it is ok!! I hope I'm right, it hasn't affected my weight loss.

[tickletussler]

sometimes I throw an absolute FIT over Fitday!

I've had a problem with dodgy food labels, esp when purchased from Asian supermarkets. I enter in as asked, then get told that the number of cals don't match up with the number of carbs I enter! Honestly! :no

so usually I keep all the protein & fat levels as they are, carbs, i use the Total carbs and if there's fibre then I just add to the total carbs (after all it's better to over-estimate carb labels right? so you don't overeat by accident)

You've gotta try and tweak it, but make sure you tweak it so that it overcounts your cals, carbs or fat, but not the protein if you can help that.

[Effie]

Ok, that's what I did too. I just adjusted the calories to what they told me it should be.

My bigger concern here is that there doesn't seem to be any consensus on how the nutritional facts are calculated. If some foods count the fiber and some don't, then how can we really trust anything?

Back when I was a weight watchers member, we used to hear stories about how certain food labels would purposely bulk up their fiber (which lowers the WW points that we ate). Then WW changed it so you could only count the first 4 grams of fiber. There was also a huge controversy about Blue Bunny ice cream. I never had it, but I guess they sold these cups of ice cream that everyone thought were 2 points, but their labels were wrong for years and they were really like 10 points! (You can have like 20-25 points in a day, so that was a HUGE miscalculation.)

The moral of the story is, I suppose, stick with foods that don't have food labels, like meat & veggies, and forget about all these damn numbers!

[Elizellen]

Re: Fitday Vs. Food Labels

Fitday said that the calories should be 24 because I should deduct the fiber from the carbs. I know in the Atkins world, we always deduct fiber from our total carbs,

Effie - it may be that the label was written in the UK way rather than the USA way.
Here our labels separate the fibre carbs from the total carbs completely, so fibre doesnt come directly below the total carbs on our labels but as a separate item.
So when I enter a custom food in fitday I have to ADD the fibre carbs to the other carbs to get fitday to accept the figures as correct.

[Raistlin]

Re: Fitday Vs. Food Labels

I just ran into this problem! As well. I took the package label right off the "BOB EVANS" web site for sausage and it told me that it should have like 140 cals not 100 cals per serving.....I just went with it. I only wse fit day to give be a ball park figure any way.