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How accurate is calorielab.com?

How accurate is calorielab.com in giving the calorie count of food items? For example, the calorie count of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Pure Vanilla Ice Blended 24oz with No Sugar Added Powder is 450kcal on calorielab.com but from the nutritional brochure provided by Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, it is 250kcal. Which one to believe?

Answer from CalorieLab:

The current nutritional brochure from the restaurant is the accurate source for the current product. Our data (430 calories, not 450) came from a previous brochure, when the calorie count of the beverage was higher, and we were not aware that a new nutritional brochure had been released.

Since the time of the older brochure the restaurant has reformulated the beverage to 250 calories by reducing the saturated fat from 2.0 grams to 0.5 grams and the carbohydrate content from 88 grams to 40 grams. The old total fat figure was 3.0 grams, but the current disclosure omits total fat, so we don’t know how much that has changed.

The reasons for the lower calorie figure might be (1) less fat due to reduced cocoa butter content, (2) less carbohydrate due to a different artificial sweetener, or (3) a decision to not include whipped cream topping in the nutritional data. But we don’t know at this time.

Carbohydrate has 4 calories per gram, so a lowering of 48 grams of carbohydrate will lower the energy content by 192 calories. Fat has 9 calories per gram, so lowering the fat from 2.0 or 3.0 grams to 0.5 to 1.5 grams will lower the energy content by 5 to 22 calories. So this could easily account for the actual difference in the old and new calorie count of 180 calories.

The FDA does not regulate voluntary disclosure of nutritional data by restaurants. It only regulates packaged food items, which are required to have Nutrition Facts labels. The new U.S. health care bill requires the FDA to regulate restaurant menu disclosure of nutrition facts, but that will not go into effect until after the FDA goes through the rule-making process, which will take 3 to 4 years.

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