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Can you trust calorie counts on food labels? What the nutrition scientists say

The math it took to calculate the number of calories in your favorite snack involved a lot more guesstimation than you may think.

The Food and Drug Administration began requiring standardized nutrition labeling — including the number of calories per serving — on most packaged foods in 1990. Obesity rates skyrocketed in the United States over the next few decades, spurring a 2016 change to the rule to list calorie counts on nutrition labels in a large, bold font.

The popular protein bar brand David is currently fighting a lawsuit alleging the company’s bars contain nearly twice as many calories as the labels claim, based on independent testing. The company’s founder said the lawsuit used an incorrect testing method to measure calories, and that the fat substitute the company uses in the protein bars does not contain as many calories as true fat does (about 9 calories per gram).

Counting calories doesn't work. Try eating smarter instead

The time of day you have a meal, how fast you scoff your food and even how much you chew it can affect how many calories you get from it.

The key to maintaining a healthy weight, accepted wisdom suggests, is to count the calories we eat against the calories we expend. It makes sense – energy in versus energy out. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

But this way of thinking misses an important truth: not all of our food's calories are the same. There's actually a complex biological interaction taking place inside our bodies, influenced by the type of food we eat, how quickly we consume it and its interaction with the bustling community of microbes living inside our guts.

Counting calories won't help you lose much fat. Doing this will

Calorie counting isn’t just difficult, it’s riddled with problems that make it practically useless for anyone trying to lose weight. But there are alternatives

Want to lose excess fat? There’s one method scientifically proven to work: the calorie deficit. In simple terms, that means eating a little less food than your body needs to fuel itself each day.

Do that, and your body starts dipping into its energy reserves – its stored fat – to make up the shortfall.

It sounds straightforward, but anyone who’s tried to lose weight this way knows the story.

You dutifully keep track of the calories in every meal – right down to the last grain of rice – to ensure your daily total remains below your regular tally, and yet the needle on the bathroom scales refuses to budge.

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