Can't Trust All Food Labels

Restaurants are doing what they can to help us be more aware of what we are putting into our bodies. Thanks to a New York City law and legislation adopted by the state of California, restaurants are required to post the calorie content of their food. A recent study has shown even these numbers may not be reliable:

Dieters can't believe everything they read: The food at many popular chain restaurants and in the freezer section of the supermarket may contain a lot more calories than advertised.

A study of 10 chain restaurants, including Wendy's and Ruby Tuesday, found that the number of calories in 29 meals or other menu items was an average of 18 percent higher than listed.

And frozen supermarket meals from Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers, Healthy Choice and South Beach Living had 8 percent more calories than the labels said, according to the study, published in this month's Journal of the American Dietetic Association. - Yahoo! News

Think about this: let's say you typically eat five 300 calorie meals a day to reach your intake of 1,500 calories. But the meals you're eating are improperly labeled and include 20% more calories than you expected. That's an extra 60 calories a meal, which adds up to a total of 300 extra calories a day! An extra 300 calories a day is certainly a significant amount of caloric deviation that could really throw a wrench into your fat loss program. What should we take from this?

Clearly this should encourage us to eat as naturally as we can and cook our own food as often as possible. Although you are still relying on food labels, you can accurately portion your meal based on the information you have rather than trusting someone who is just slamming sandwiches together in the back for minimum wage This knowledge should also push us to work out more frequently ensuring our body is getting daily activity and our metabolism is receiving the jolt it needs to burn more calories!