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A question that I don't know how to word well about calories

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Answer

Fats are approximately 9 calories to process. Carbs and Protein are 4.

So 5,5,5, = 45+20+20 =85

There is some weirdness with actual colorless vs the label, but it isn’t something to be overly worried with (if you are top tier athlete then maybe, but for common person, it’s all good)

Tldr version that someone more knowledgeable could explain is 5g could be between something 4.7 and 5.2, and calorie totals usually are rounded to nearest 5 or 10 (92>90 or 95)

So to answer the main Q- yes, calories on label are already the total added or its contents.

Answer

Dietary calories come from macronutrients (carbs, fat, protein, alcohol, and I believe three more that are very niche and are almost never present in food), and nowhere else.

> let’s say a piece of food has 100 calories per serving and 5 grams of fat, carbs, and protein

1 gram of fat has 9 calories; 1 gram of carbs has 4 calories; 1 gram of protein also has 4 calories. So if a piece of food has 5g fat, 5g protein, and 5g carbs, it would have 85 calories, not 100.

I track my caloric intake using an Excel spreadsheet but never look at the calories on the label. I just enter grams of carbs, fat, and protein and in my spreadsheet carbs and protein get multiplied by 4 calories per gram, fats get multiplied by 9 calories per gram, and I sum this. Obviously, it’s usually very close or exactly equal to the calories printed on the label. Like, it’ll come out to 108 calories and the label says 110; I’ve found that they’re always rounded to the nearest 10 calories, or 5 if they’re below ~75 calories per serving.

But for Halo Top ice cream I perform this calculation and it comes out 405 calories per serving when the label says 350. That’s a significant difference, and it makes no sense, which is annoying.

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