The Results Are In – Muffin vs Pasta

In the previous post I asked you all to guess at the calorie count on a banana nut muffing and a bowl of home made pasta with a light sauce.

The real calorie count of each are as follows:

Muffin = 390 calories

Pasta Bowl = 407

If you guessed they were the same you were right.

The point of this exercise was to show two things.

1) We all seem to have a much different assumption about calories in a given food. If you scan the guesses in the comment section some people were guessing as much as three times as many calories as other people. Clearly as a society we’re not all on the same page with our assumptions about calories. Some of us are in completely different books!

2) Two different foods of wildly different appearance and size can have the same calories. The pasta is in a full sized pasta bowl. It was home made and had a light sauce based with some chicken broth, corn starch, some orange bell peppers and some chunks of onion and basil (and a touch of garlic…tasty stuff)

The muffin is just a standard commercial muffin you could find at most coffee shops.

Awareness of the food you are eating and the amount of calories in that food goes a long way for helping you lose weight (if that is your goal)

I’m guessing some of you will be a bit surprised at this answer, and some of you hit the nail right on the head with your guess.

If you had to choose between the two, which one would you rather eat? Or would you just hit em’ both! Or go half and half?…or both of these plus a pizza! ha!

Anyway, let me know what you’d do if both of these items were on the table in front of you right now.

John

Posted by johnbarban in Fat Loss, Weight Loss
Tags: Calories, Weight Loss |22 Comments

22 Responses to “The Results Are In – Muffin vs Pasta”

  1. Bob Ross Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 9:53 am

    John, a very useful exercise.

    As a long time counter, a couple of comments. It’s practical to round up calories to the nearest 100 to account for under-estimates and under reports of food eaten. Here, the muffin is pretty easy to estimate, but the pasta depends a great deal on whether olive oil is present, which you cannot determine from the picture alone.

  2. Bob Ross Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 10:04 am

    Second thought. Despite the variations, an average of 25 of the guesses gives 507 calories for the muffin and 524 for the pasta. As a practical matter, those two numbers really are quite accurate for determining how much you can eat and either lose or maintain weight. Especially if you estimate consistently. Bob

  3. johnbarban Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 10:18 am

    @Bob Ross
    Thats a great piece of advice.

    If weight loss is the goal, then missing high on your calorie guess will definitely always help you with losing weight.

    And the actual size and calorie total of things like commercially available muffins are always an average, so each muffin has some variability from the total stated on the package.

    This is a great rule about rounding up for making sure you’re not eating more than you need.

    JB

  4. Ed Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    Gross, I wouldn’t eat either, I would go have a steak.

    –Ed

  5. Joy Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    I’d go pasta all the way yum. That muffin didn’t appeal to me at all.
    Thanks for the visual and helping to make us aware of food and the calories.

  6. Labadiet Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    Both items are essentially indulgences in my book. I’ll take none of the above, needless to say :)

  7. Diederik Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    I’ll go for both. And the pizza. And the steak. And some fries with mayo and a double cheeseburger and some noodles and some ice cream and a beer maybe?

  8. oolala53 Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    I’d take out some of the pasta and add some olives, cottage cheese, and a chopped tomato. Actually, I find that if I take small bites of food, chew slowly and really savor it, I can usually–of course, not always– tell if it has a fair amount of fat in it, which you can’t see. I find that I will get full before finishing, if it is calorie dense. So, it’s not just in the looking…

    But, I did guess that they were about the same.

  9. Scott in Ohio Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Either of these items would be a “treat” meal for me so I’d go with both.

  10. aleknovy Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    I would:

    1) Eat what my body tells me to eat at that time (not my mind, or my habits)
    2) Eat it slowly, conciously and bite for bite
    3) Determine how much to eat OF it, but how much meets my physical needs…

    Often with something sweet like that, i might end up like eating 1/3 of it only.

  11. aleknovy Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

    Ya, i agree oolala, same thing. Your body knows how many calories something has when you eat it, not your eyes.

    If you REALLY savour every molecule of it, you know if its too much calories, too little, needs some more of something else…

    We are brainwashed in using our eyes/minds to determine what/how much to eat, through marketing and nutritionist-driven-overanalysis and confusion.

  12. Brian Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    ‘Eat’ both depnding on how much already eaten that day, then ‘stop’, then ‘eat’ again.;)

  13. mivox Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Pasta, definitely… especially if I can get olive oil Parmesan cheese to put on it. ;-)

  14. Ray Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    I’d go with the pastsa and add some cayenne pepper to it.

  15. chris c Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    I’d slam down that muffin in literally 3 bites. I am not much of a pasta guy so that wouldn’t be too hard to limit.

  16. chris c Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    Although scanning the other posts, Diederik had a good idea…..:)

  17. kristen Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    I’d go for the pasta, hands down!

  18. Chris M Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 9:52 pm

    Just wondering, how did you arrive at those numbers? Nutrition labels? Are they accurate, and do you trust them?

  19. Chris M Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    And in response to your question, I’d eat the pasta for sure. I know it would likely fill up my stomach and trigger the feeling of ‘fullness’ if I ate it slowly and consciously… whilst the muffin would not leave me satisfied, no matter how quickly I ate it… I’d probably want more.

  20. Sean Rafferty Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    Right now? I’d pass. I’m fasting :-) And I have that fresh feel on my teeth cuz I just brushed, flossed and washed! (a great way to deter cheating or late night snacks might I add!)

  21. Bob Ross Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 9:02 am

    Spreading out the pasta in a large dish is a great way to use visual cues to help your body decide it has eaten enough. There are really a number excellent teaching points in your post — well done.

  22. johnbarban Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    @Chris M
    The muffin is from a nutrition info guide from a popular coffee shop in Canada.

    The pasta bowl is completely home made, the pasta itself was home made by a friend of mine. She gave me the ingredient list and the amounts of each ingredient she included in making the pasta.

    So yes I trust the numbers.

    JB

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