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I went on a winter/holiday weight loss journey some time ago, dropping 25 lbs in about a month to get ready for less-cold bike season. Calorie in vs calorie out, simple enough, right? I cook freestyle and eyeball everything, so inputting the ingredients into the calorie calculator was a pain. So I simply made larger batches or base batches I could add other stuff to so I could store it as a recipe I could reload.
But then I ran into another problem. The nutrition labels lie! You see, if the ingredient is less than a certain amount, U.S. FDA regulations allow it to be listed as zero. For example, cooking spray is often listed as "fat free" even if it's nearly 100% fat (there's an emulsifier and propellant too) since a single spray falls below the minimum. The FDA minimum is 5 calories per serving. So manufacturers will adjust the serving size such that the stigmatized ingredient falls below 5 calories.
Another extreme example involves Tic Tacs. While nearly entirely sugar, an individual Tic Tac is less than 0.5g, where the minimum amount of sugar to be counted is 0.5g. Thus, it is described as "sugar free".
Back to the topic at hand. How do you deal with this if you're calorie counting? Look up the FDA minimums and assume that is how much is in the foodstuffs. You can find that here: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.60
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