The Atwater system, now used to pin down caloric values, must be updated

Feb 5, 2013 08:39 GMT  ·  By

Rachel Carmody, a researcher currently working with the University of Harvard, now claims that calorie labels are more often than not inaccurate and that they must be updated as soon as possible.

More so seeing how quite a lot a people are presently dealing with various weight issues and find themselves in dire need of being able to make informed decisions concerning their diet.

According to Rachel Carmody, the Atwater system, which is now used to determine the caloric values of various dishes and which also happens to be roughly 100 years old, does not take into account issues having to do with how the food is cooked and/or served.

Furthermore, it fails to take into consideration how digestion can toy with the caloric input that an individual can get from a given meal.

As this Harvard researcher puts it, “The calorie values reported on food labels do not capture important costs of digestion that are typically lower for processed foods and higher for unmodified items.”

“So although two foods might have the same number of calories on paper, these calories are not necessarily equally available to the body. In some cases, reported calorie values could differ from actual energy harvest by as much as 50per cent,” Rachel Carmody went on to add.

Daily Mail informs us that, for the time being, this Harvard researcher and many other nutrition experts are calling for new calorie counts on both nutrition labels and on restaurant menus.

More precisely, they hope that those in charge of providing this diet-related information to the general public will agree to give due attention to how preparation and processing techniques impact on the number of calories individuals can consume while eating various dishes.

“Given that the Atwater system is treating essentially all foods the same, we aren’t getting a good perspective when it comes to making dietary choices. We can start to think of simple ways to improve [the system] that will be better for the average consumer,” Rachel Carmody said.