Wednesday, May 18, 2011

California Baking Company

This is a post based on a discussion that occurred this morning in Clairemont at my 6:30am meeting. So if it seems random to you, that's why.

California Baking Company is a bakery located in Chula Vista that sells French style rolls. Their products are carried at local Smart and Final stores. Susie brought in their package this morning and a great discussion came out of it.

The product in question is an approximately 4 ounce French roll (yes, we got out the scale and weighed it in the meeting room) that according to the package label contains only 90 calories. Using all of the nutrition information and a PointsPlus calculator, this roll apparently calculates out to ONE PointsPlus.

Before you run out and snatch the entire supply off the shelf, this would be a time to employ some common sense. Does it sound too good to be true? According to our very own Pocket Guide, a high fiber dinner roll clocks in at 4 PointsPlus for a 2 ounce roll. The folks at CalorieKing say a generic French roll that weighs 4 ounces would contain over 300 calories...far higher than 90!

I googled the company, and they have no web presence. There are several yellow page websites that list their business information (address and phone number). I found a three year old blog entry by a guy who raves about how these low-calorie rolls are helping him have a healthy lunch. I find it easy to believe that a company that can't be bothered to have a web presence (Facebook! A blog! Twitter! Anything!) in this day and age might end up with erroneous nutrition information on their food packages.

I cannot prove that 90 calories for one of their rolls is correct OR incorrect. But having held them in my own hands this morning, I do not feel comfortable eating one and assigning it 1 PointsPlus value. Something just doesn't seem right here.

Who knows if we'll ever get to the real truth here. But this is a cautionary tale - nutrition labels can be incorrect. Right Pirate's Booty? If you feel like something is too good to be true, it just might be.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

the website is as follows: www.californiabaking.com. They are a wholesale company that services Sprouts, Costco, Restaurant Depot and the Navy.

Outsmart the Fat! said...

Thanks for the update! Two years ago they obviously didn't have a website for me to find. I notice there isn't any nutrition information available online, but if anyone out there is still confused by any CA Baking products, at least there's a contact form to reach out to the company.