Weight Loss Advice You Haven't Heard Before

Beware of food-labeling loopholes that can cause you to lose track of calories or fat grams. "The makers of Pam cooking spray state on the can that a single ["fat-free"] serving size is a '1/4 second spray.'...The manufacturers of Pam aren't trying to be funny. Instead, they're taking advantage of what amounts to a 'fat-free' loophole in food-labeling regulations. As long as there is a half a gram or less of fat (or trans fat) per serving, manufacturers can label a serving as having 0 grams of fat! A can of olive oil spray, even when it contains 100 percent olive oil (which certainly has fat) can take advantage of this labeling loophole if the listed serving size is small enough. Coffee creamers that claim to have zero fat per serving may actually contain 40 percent fat, but if the serving size is listed as a teaspoon (which has less than 0.5 grams of fat)—an unrealistic serving size for many—it's perfectly okay to claim zero fat. If one teaspoon has 0.4 gram of fat and you use a tablespoon, that's 1.2 grams of fat—when you thought were getting none."

From The Weight of the Nation: Surprising Lessons about Diets, Food, and Fat from the Extraordinary HBO Documentary Series by John Hoffman; Judith Salerno, M.D, M.S.; and Alexandra Moss. Copyright © 2012 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press, LLC.