Hello, I'm Monica Reinebel and you're listening to The Nutrition Diva Podcast Welcome.

I recently heard from a long time listener who was upset by what she felt was highly misleading

nutrition information on one of her favorite products.

Alice explained that she'd been eating a lot of tortillas in the form of breakfast tacos,

wraps for lunch, and tortilla and peanut butter roll-ups for snacks.

And she'd found a few different low-calorie tortillas that had anywhere from 30 to 50

calories according to their labels.

But she wrote, when I calculated the calories myself by multiplying the grams of carbohydrate

by 4, the grams of protein by 4, and the grams of fat by 9, the result was almost double

what the nutrition labels showed.

If you're someone who only has a wrap on occasion, she wrote, it's not a big deal,

but if you're someone like me who eats several wraps per day, you could be eating a lot

more calories than you think you are.

So how can they get away with this?

Well in fact, the nutrition counts provided on these labels were perfectly legal, as well

as reasonably accurate.

There are a few reasons why the calorie counts on nutrition facts labels may not add up the

way you think they should, and one big one has to do with a common misunderstanding about

how many calories the so-called macros, carbohydrates, fats, and protein provide.

It's commonly believed that 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories, 1 gram of protein has

4 calories, and 1 gram of fat has 9 calories.

But these numbers, which are called at-water equivalents, only represent the average values

...