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FDA stands for 'Foiled Diet Again'

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Minor Musings

Published: January 31, 2010

I'm frustrated.

For the past month I've been dieting, as I do every January. I'm reducing carbs and eating only lean meats, more chicken and fish, more veggies, no desserts, etc. I've even added some serious exercise — walking and doing strength training every day. I've even increased my time and speed a little every week. I also have been carefully monitoring food labels so I can limit calories, fat and sodium.

But it's not working; I'm not losing. At first I blamed it on a slower metabolism due to aging, but that may be only part of the problem. Today I learned something that really has me steamed. It seems the FDA allows a margin of error as much as 20 percent on food labels. That's ridiculous!

Think about it. If I eat a frozen diet entree that says it's 250 calories. I could actually be consuming 300 calories and not know it. That means, if I'm aiming at 2,000 calories per day, I may actually be getting 2,400. That's enough difference to be the whole reason I'm not losing!

Why is this discrepancy not revealed right on the labels? Is that too much to ask? What if I were a diabetic? I could be consuming 20 percent more sugar than I think I'm getting, just because the FDA doesn't require the manufacturer to reveal the true amount of sugar in the product.

Granted, they can't measure calories exactly. Foods vary in content. Four ounces of one cut of beef may contain more fat than four ounces of another cut because they come from separate animals.

Vegetables and fruits are no different. They vary, particularly in natural sugar content. No one knows that better than we Floridians. The oranges on my own backyard tree are much sweeter some years than others. But when processed and canned or frozen, I doubt the actual calorie content varies 20 percent.

So why is the 20 percent error margin deemed acceptable? Because it allows manufacturers of food products sold as "low fat" or "low calorie" to make those foods taste better than they would if calorie counts had to be more accurate.

Lately we've heard dire warnings from the medical establishment about the dangers of consuming too much salt. Apparently, the FDA didn't listen, because the 20 percent error margin also applies to salt. Think about that. Salt is almost always added to food in the processing, rather than naturally occurring in the food. If the manufacturer adds it, they should be able to tell me exactly how much is in there. No margin for error needed, right?

My question then is who is the FDA protecting, us or the manufacturers? If the margin were truly meant to account for the natural calorie differences in food products, such as fruits that are sweeter in one harvest than the next, then it naturally follows that there ought to be times when the 250-calorie frozen entree is actually less than 250 calories, right?

Wrong. Testing by independent labs has found no such correlation. What they have found is that, if the calorie content varies, it is always over the amount stated on the label, never under.

I don't know about you, but I smell a rat here! (Margin of error, 20 percent.)

So, dieters, from now on, when you read food labels, just assume that there's 20 percent more sugar, salt, fat and calories in the food than the label indicates. That shouldn't be too hard.

Or, you could train yourself to eat only 80 percent of that already miniscule frozen entrée. If you're like me, the expected margin of error on that is 100 percent.

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