2Sep, 2009

Decoding Nutrition Facts, Part 1: Number of Servings

As I mention in my last post I am a big advocate of occasionally cheating on your diet.

If I do not have plans to go to a bbq or a nice restaurant, my cheat food of choice is pizza.

image010 Decoding Nutrition Facts, Part 1: Number of Servings Cue Homer Simpson. “MMM PIZZA”.

I like to stick to the frozen varieties that you can get at your local grocer. I do this mainly because it is easy to check the nutrition facts by looking at the label.

But I recently screwed this up.

Big Time.

While I was shopping a couple of weeks ago a very popular brand of frozen pizza was on sale. I being the frugal person that I am (and the fact that I was getting bored with the pizza I typically buy) decided to see if any of the varieties were somewhat “healthy“.

By “healthy” I mean won’t kill me instantly.

I found one that looked pretty good and was only 10 calories more per serving.

The important part of that statement being per serving. This fact alone should have been a red flag considering the differences in type of pizza and the toppings invovled.

I did not notice the mistake I made until much later. Ignorance IS bliss.

When it came time to have this pizza I was still in awe that it was only 10 calories more per serving.

Then a wave of dread hit me.

I never checked the amount of servings per pizza.

image012 Decoding Nutrition Facts, Part 1: Number of Servings

image014 Decoding Nutrition Facts, Part 1: Number of Servings

The pizza I regularly buy is 310 calories per serving with 3 servings per pizza (who cuts a pizza into an odd number of slices anyway). The pizza I had purchased that day was 320 calories per serving with 6 servings per pizza.

What I thought was a measly extra 30 calories turned out to be about an extra 1000 calories.

Oops.

That’s a good way to blow your diet if done regularly.

No wonder why so many people have trouble losing weight.

So the next time you are comparing similar food items that seem close to each other calorie wise. Make sure that they actually contain the same number of servings. If it seems to good to be true it probably is.

Health and Happiness,

Paul

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Fitness, Nutrition, Weight Loss Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.