Ah how I chortled (there's a word I haven't used for a long time) to myself when I read about a wee bit of a problem with Nanny's calorie measures printed on food packs.As loyal readers know, Nanny is obsessed with how much we eat and is very keen to remind us on a daily basis that we should not eat more than her prescribed daily calorie limit (2,500 for chaps and 2,000 for chapesses).
How do we know how many calories there are in our food?
Nanny has insisted for many years that manufacturers print the calorie content on food packs.
All fine and dandy..maybe.
However, it transpires that the calorie labels on our packs of horsemeat lasagne etc may not be entirely accurate.
Really?
Yes, for it seems that the calorie measures ignore the calorie content of fibre. Thus those of you who think that they are being very healthy in eating a "low calorie" bowl of Mueseli are in fact kidding yourselves, you are in fact eating an extra 250 calories per week without realising it.
Gosh!...snut snut:)
Ironically the calorie labels overstate the calorie content of protein by up to 20%. This means that we can all go out and eat 20% more steak, pork, chicken, horse etc.
Hoozah!
Oh, and by the way, cooking and processing food can alter calorie levels by up to 30% because we burn more energy digesting things which are hard and uncooked.
I a;ready did ignore the labels. There is now so much print on food boxes that it is too small to be readable anyway. That often includes the cooking instructions, so I work on the principle that if it is nearly burnt its done.
ReplyDeleteAnd I hate icons - they never mean anything to me, my brain doesn't work that way. In a new car I just prod things until I find out what does which. Otherwise I'd have to swap to my reading glasses to see the tiny picture of whatever. While I was doing that I would have taken my eyes off the road for a lot longer than using a mobile phone!