In December, 2015, Weight Watchers announced another sweeping change in its Points system. SmartPoints replaces PointsPlus. If you’ve gone rogue by doing Weight Watchers solo, you need to join up again to access the new tools and purchase the new recipe books and calculator. We did another dive into Weight Watchers published patent applications, but as yet we’ve found no trace of the SmartPoints formula.
These calculations are much appreciated and look forward to seeing someone tackle and crack the allotment calculation. Until then, I’ll continue with the PointsPlus program:). I am trying to convert my old recipes that only state carbs and not sugars. 228 Cal, 5g of fat, 1g sat fat, 0trans fats, 7 g carbs, 0 fiber, 36g prot.
So we read the marketing materials, and then we rolled up our sleeves and started analyzing sample nutrition data, keeping in mind what we had learned from the PointsPlus patent documents about how Ms. Miller-Kovach and her team like to structure formulas. And the solution came quicker than we expected. Without further delay, here’s CalorieLab’s conjectured SmartPoints formula: The result, SP, is rounded up or down. The values Calories, Sugar grams, SatFat (saturated fat) grams, and Protein grams are taken off the U.S. Or Canadian Nutrition Facts labels of packaged food, or for generic foods, from CalorieLab’s nutrition database or other source.
For restaurant foods you’re at the mercy of what they disclose, and few restaurants disclose sugar values at this point. Important note: In the new Beyond the Scale program, of which SmartPoints is one component, vegetables and fruits are zero SmartPoints, no matter what the formula says. It’s impossible to “remove” produce from Nutrition Facts data and restaurant-disclosed data, but for home-cooked recipes you have that control.
For each of the three multiplication groups in the formula, the first value in each grouping (1 or 0.8) represents a weighting factor, and the second number (4 or 9) represents the number of calories per gram for the macronutrient. A weighting of 1 means the value is unweighted, so in effect you are penalized for eating sugar and saturated fat by having their calories doubled; but you are encouraged to eat protein because you get its calories reduced by 80 percent.
The calories per gram figures, 4 for sugar (a kind of carbohydrate) and protein, and 9 for saturated fat, are the standard estimates used by all nutritionists, and referenced by Weight Watchers in previous patents. The divisor of 33 scales the final number down to the range to which Weight Watchers members are accustomed from their past experience with the Points and PointsPlus systems. Update: In a post to Reddit’s WeightWatchers forum in early 2018 a user using the handle sulusulu posted that he had determined the SmartPoints forumula using linear algebra, solving a system of linear equations using matrices. He gathered data from the official WeightWatchers’s calculator, inputting a variety of foods for which at least one of the nutritional variables was known to be zero, setting the servings to 100 to maximize precision. Was the same as ours: “Calorielab also did a calculation and we agreed! Which is cool!” This was exciting for us, since our method was more trial and error, so it’s nice to see that a more formal mathematical approach arrives at the same formula. Simplifying the SmartPoints Equation Simplifying the formula, Reduced to decimals, In all cases, the value of SP is rounded up or down.
Expressed as a series of instructions:. Obtain the calorie value for the food and multiply it by 0.0303. Obtain the sugar value and multiply it by 0.1212. Obtain the value for saturated fat and multiply it by 0.2727.
Add these three numbers together. Obtain the protein value and multiply it by 0.0970. Subtract this number from the previous result. Round up or down to produce the SmartPoints value Could You Do This in Your Head? Is it possible for mere mortals to figure out the SmartPoints in their heads while shopping, without pulling out your mobile phone and using an app? We think it is, and doing this regularly will stave off senility.
Here’s how to do it: Note: See the next section for a simpler way to do it in your head. First you need to remember the four pieces of data you need. Calories is one, and it should be easy to remember. Then there are sugar, saturated fat, and protein. Remember sugar and saturated fat because they are famously “bad” stuff; and protein is “good,” in that it’s what other diets like Paleo and Atkins think you should eat a lot of; dietary fiber is also good, but it’s not in the formula: just remember that it’s covered by the free fruit and vegetables rule. Calories has no multiplier.
The multiplers for the non-calorie nutrients are 4, 9, and 3.2 for sugar, saturated fat, and protein. Remember these by remembering that the calories per gram for the three macronutrients, carbohydrate (which includes sugars), fat, and protein are 4, 9, 4, respective. Remember that fat has more than twice the calories of carbohydrate and protein. The formula uses these values as is, except the protein multiplier is weighted down to 80 percent, 3.2. Remember that you start with the calories, then add (as a penalty) the bad stuff, and finally subtract the good stuff, protein.
Subtracting is good because it makes the points lower. As for doing the math itself, try these tricks: (1) Round off after every operation; (2) remember that 4 is close to 5, which is half of ten, so you can add a zero and cut in half, and then round the result down; (3) 9 is close to 10, so you can add a zero and round down; 3.2 is close to a third of 10 times, so add a zero and cut into a third. Finally, dividing by 33 is simply moving the decimal point left one digit and taking a third, or you can simply figure that there are 3 SmartPoints per every 100 units of the previous result. The key is to not try to get exact results with every operation: round and estimate as you go, and if you remember that you rounded down a bit for the last operation you can round up a bit for the next.
We’ve found that if you can accept a plus-or-minus 1 point degree of accuracy, you can get pretty adept at estimating SmartPoints in your head in the grocery aisle. An Even Simpler Version If you’re willing to give up a little accuracy, a variation of a formula given by Mary Melick in the comments below is very easy to apply.
Mary’s formula figures the SmartPoints contributed by the calories first, and then adds and subtracts from that figure based on the nutrient values and dividing them by simple integers. In our testing the results are about 10 percent off using Mary’s original divisors, but we’ve modified them to be more accurate. So you go through the following thought process in the grocery aisle:. You start with 3 SmartPoints per 100 calories (calories divided by 33). Then you divide the sugar by 8 and add to the result in step 1. Now you divide the saturated fat by 4 and add it.
Finally, you move the decimal point one space to the left (i.e., divide by 10), and then subtract that to get the final estimate. To the extent that you can keep the remainders/decimal results in your head and more-or-less take them into account, your figure will be more accurate. For example, if you get about 1.3 from sugar and 1.3 from saturated fat, rather than rounding them both to 1, you can consider them together to be 3. Although easy to remember and handy, Mary’s formula is nevertheless a (very close) estimate. To make it perfect the 8, 4, and 10 would need to be unrounded decimal numbers, and you’d be better off just remembering the real formula at the top of this page. Why We Think Our Formula is the Real Formula Not only does our formula produce points that match our sample SmartPoints test data, it fits the prior pattern established in Weight Watcher’s patents over the previous 5 years:.
The standard whole number calories-per-gram-values are used. These values are modified by weighting factors that are clean decimal numbers divisible by 0.05. The initially obtained value is divided by an integral divisor to scale the value to something in the general range of the previous Points systems. All required numbers are available in the Nutrition Facts label. The first three factors above need to be met to conform to the established pattern of using only clean, pretty numbers in all formulas created by Karen Miller-Kovach and her team, as documented in previous patents. The last factor is necessary for any formula to be applied to a broad range of food in the real world, although the vegetable and fruit exception makes it impossible to compute perfectly accurate SmartPoints values for other than homemade food because Nutrition Facts labels and restaurant disclosure data include all ingredients in the numbers. Weight Watchers has a recipe tool that reportedly ignores vegetable ingredients when computing SmartPoints.
On the one hand, the fact that you cannot exclude vegetables in packaged and restaurant food and are thus penalized with higher SmartPoints functions as a disincentive to eat those foods and to stick to home-prepared food. Healthwise this is good, but it isn’t very convenient in the modern world. A cynic might say that WeightWatchers wants to put pressure on food manufacturers to license the SmartPoints system and trademark so they can print the SmartPoints value directly on packages, and incidentally provide a new income sourde for Weight Watchers.
At any rate, try this formula out on your own food and see if it matches the results that you get from the WeightWatchers tools. If you find any discrepancies, please comment below or send us e-mail, and include the four nutrition numbers as well as the SmartPoints value that the official tools produced, so we can try to troubleshoot our formula.
It’s interesting to note the evolution of what Weight Watchers considers important. The original Points system encouraged a low fat diet with a reasonable amount of fiber. PointsPlus added in an emphasis for high protein foods. Now SmartPoints throws out fiber from the formula altogether (although admitedly zero-points vegetables and fruit encourage fiber consumption), and penalizes high-sugar and high-saturated fat foods. We can’t help but think that Weight Watchers is (1) chasing popular media diet trends while (2) closing loopholes that members have been able to game. Of course, even the new system can be gamed, for instance by chug-a-lugging monounsaturated olive oil.
Bonus Content for Numerologists We noticed that the formula can be restated as 1-squared times calories plus 2-squared times sugar plus 3-squared times saturated fat minus 4-squared-divided-by-5 times protein, all divided by 33. October 2015 pre-SmartPoints post is below In late 2010 Weight Watchers International announced a major overhaul of its popular Points system formula, the first in over a decade. The previous formula penalized high fat foods with more Points; foods known to be high in dietary fiber could reduce the Points to a certain extent. The new formula, PointsPlus, still takes into account all three macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate, and fat, without penalizing fat as much, favoring protein to an extent, and significantly favoring dietary fiber. CalorieLab has examined public U.S.
And international patent documentation and referenced analysis by other independent nutrition publications in order to determine the probable Points Plus formula currently used by Weight Watchers in the United States and Canadian markets. Note: Many online resources still reflect 2010-12 era reverse-engineered curve fitting iterative formula approximations and are not correct. Blind online calculators that don’t show the formula that they are using are particularly suspect.
Step-by-Step, Numbered First we’re going to give you a step-by-step method for determining the PointsPlus in foods that you can do with a calculator or program into an Excel spreadsheet. Although a few packaged food manufacturers and restaurants license the PointsPlus system from Weight Watchers and print the values on their packaging and menus, most often the dieter has to figure out the number of Points himself by referring to disclosed macronutrient values on packaging and menus. Since nutritional disclosure varies in its details by country, the Weight Watchers PointPlus patent includes several variations of the basic formula. We’re presenting the U.S. And Canada variation here. Get the four gram values for protein, total carbohydrate (just “carbohydrate” in Canada), total fat, and dietary fiber from the Nutrition Facts label of packaged food or from the CalorieLab database.
Divide protein by 10.94. Divide total carbohydrate by 9.21. Divide total fat by 3.89. Add the results of 2 through 4. Divide dietary fiber by 12.5. Subtract from the sum obtained in 5 the quotient from 6.
Round up to the nearest whole number. For an easier-to-remember formula, you can round the four divisors to 11, 9, 4, and 12, respectively. Here it is in the form of a formula: where Carbs is Total Carbohydrate, including Dietary Fiber and Fiber is Dietary Fiber alone; and please note the the final fraction is subtracted from the previous sum, and the final figure is rounded up to a whole number. Note: This formula works in the United States and Canada, where a quirk in the Nutrition Facts labels includes dietary fiber in the Total Carbohydrate figure. In other places the carbohydrate figure listed on packaged food labels is exclusive of dietary fiber, use that carbohydrate figure in step 3, divide by 35 in step 6, and add (not subtract) in step 7.
Weight Watchers Points Background Weight Watchers is a meeting-based diet program that has been rated highly for effectiveness by Consumer Reports, and US News and World Reports. The primary gimmick of Weight Watchers has long been its Points system (usually styled in all caps), for all practical purposes a branded proxy for calories, but with smaller, friendlier numbers. The number of Points worth of food and drink that a member can consume per day is determined based on the same sort of factors that a physician would look at to figure out recommended calories: body weight and height, age and sex, and activity level.
In November 2010 Weight Watchers announced that a new system, PointsPlus, the then current Points system. (Around this time other new versions of Points were introduced around the world, with differences tailored to the specifics of local packaged food nutrition disclosure regulations.) The new system added protein into the equation and reduced the penalty for fat. Weight Watchers chief scientific officer, nutritionist Karen Miller-Kovach, attributed the change to improved understanding of metabolism and weight loss mechanisms. Skeptics pointed out that members had to purchase new calculators, reference books, and cookbooks. The original Points system The formula for the original Points system was: where C is total calories, F is fat, and R is dietary fiber.
This formula penalized fat by in effect multiplying each calorie sourced from fat by 5 relative to carbohydrate and protein calories; and dietary fiber was encouraged by subtracting back out a multiple of the calories from fiber for the first 4 grams worth. So the original Points system promoted the traditional American low-fat approach to dieting, and made up for the lack of fat by promoting filling dietary fiber. The Current PointsPlus Weight Watchers does not discuss the formula behind PointsPlus, but presumably it is based on U.S. Patent 8382482, filed in August 2009 and published in February 2013 (various other U.S. And international patent application materials and documentation relating to this system and differing in details have been available online since around the time that PointsPlus was announced). The patent describes a number of formulas and variations for various purposes, with various modifications, but the core formula for determining “food energy data,” the precursor to a food’s Points number, seems to be formula 10 in the Description section of the patent (the so-called United States and Canada formula).
That base forumula in the patent is: where the values with the subscript m’s represent the grams (“mass”) of each macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate, and fat), as well as dietary fiber; the C values represent the number of calories per gram for each macronutrient (4 for protein and carbohydrate, including dietary fiber, and 9 for fat, the standard values used in nutrition science); and the W values represent weighting factors applied to each macronutrient, 0.80 for protein, 0.95 for carbohydrate, 1.00 for fat, and 0.25 for dietary fiber. (In other words, they’re only counting 80 percent of the protein, 95 percent of the carbohydrate, and a quarter of the fiber; but they count all the fat calories. In the patent these weightings are justified by metobolic theories that may or may not have a basis in science.) Recall that the previous Points system significantly penalized fat, while allowing you to go hog-wild with protein. PointsPlus only slightly penalizes fat relative to the other macronutrients, while adding protein to the equation to prevent protein binging, although protein gets off with lighter weighting than the other two macronutrients. As with the previous Points system, dietary fiber is given special treatment.
Nutrition Facts labels, carbohydrate is given as a total figure, with a breakout of its sugar and dietary fiber components. In the PointsPlus equation dietary fiber is subtracted out of the total carbohydrate number, then added back in, with its own lower weighing, 0.25. Many simplifications of the PointsPlus out there don’t make this clear, and it may appear that dietary fiber is subtracted: The more fiber, the fewer points. In fact, the carbohydrate number should have the dietary fiber number subtracted from it, and then the dietary fiber is added back, with its lower weighting. The more fiber, the higher the Points, but only a quarter of the nominal calories in fiber is counted. Depending on the type of dietary fiber, only half or maybe less is metabolized, so the formula seems to be partially taking this into account. On the whole, the PointsPlus system seems to be closer to out-and-out calorie counting than the Points system.
No macronutrient is given a free ride, and the weightings are more even than before, at or within 20 percent of 1.00, full weighting. There are some alternative formulas in the patent for special cases, such as alcohols and sugar alcohols, different types of fats, and various classifications of food healthfulness. We don’t know if this is just obfuscation and patent claim creep, or if any of these alternative formulas are in use in the presently released version of PointsPlus. And as mentioned above, there are regional variations of the formula to take into account local disclosure regulations. There have been unsourced reports that the formula in commercial use by Weight Watchers has been tweaked subsequent to its introduction.
The only way to tell would be to test the formula against all the foods listed in current Weight Watchers reference materials, and nobody’s done that. But spot checking seems to verify that formula 10 is the basis of the current PointsPlus, with the exception of a blanket zero Points value for most fresh fruits and vegetables.
Of course, these do have calories, but the idea is that few people will pig out on fruit and vegetables to an extent that will affect their weight loss. At the End of the Day, PointsPlus is Calorie Counting Getting back to the formula above, the result is FED, or “food energy data,” not Points. It’s a slightly massaged calorie value as far as we’re concerned. And you can easily get the full calorie value from the Nutrition Facts label without a calculator. So after all these years Weight Watchers switched from Points to calorie counting, but they’re making you do the math yourself or buy reference books, rather than just reading the calories off the box? Yep, that’s our opinion. But that would not be good for Weight Watchers.
So Weight Watchers takes the output of the formula above, the FED, and divides it by 35 to produce PointsPlus. The patent says that it’s done “for the customer’s convenience.” We think that they do it because the result brings the number down to the same range as the original familiar Points system, and it makes the calorie connection less clear. There are many benefits to the Weight Watchers program, which ranked first in Consumer Reports 2013 diet season diet rankings, including peer motivation and realistic menus that your family can also eat. But the PointsPlus system is, in our opinion, simply an obfuscation of calorie counting. The good news is that calorie counting (or calorie restriction) is the only diet technique that works.
If putting numbers into a calculator to figure out Points keeps you motivated and mindful, we can’t criticize that. While we don’t go into how to compute the daily Points you’re allowed under the PointsPlus program, you won’t be too far off if you simply take the number of daily calories you would need to maintain your weight at your goal weight (in the range of BMI 18.5 to 25), subtract 1,000 calories (for a two-pound-per-week weight loss velocity), and divide by the magic “customer convenience” number of 35.
For instance, if you take the generic FDA women’s guidance of 2,000 calories, reduce that by 1,000 calories to 1,000, then divide by 35 and round up, you end up with 29 Points. (This builds in the weekly “fun points” into the daily number.) More Formulas For the mathematically inclined the following formulas present the PointsPlus in various degrees of simplification.
Now for a version of the patent’s “Formula 10” above, but with numbers substituded for the constants and the 35 divisor added to produce PointsPlus. If you pre-multiply the numbers, you get: PointsPlus = ((3.2 x Protein) + (3.8 x (Carbs – Fiber)) + (9.0 x Fat) + (1.0 x Fiber)) / 35 From this you can derived the simple PointsPlus formula below the step-by-step instructions at the top of this post by dividing the numbers and combining the two dietary fiber terms. I think the new smart points calculations would be: Calories by 30 Saturated Fat by 3 Sugar by 7 then subtract Protein divided by 4 – but can only be one point subtracted regardless of Protein grams. For example 8 grams of protein still only yield -1 point. It looks like the protein grams are dependent upon other points too. Has anyone else tried to guess the calculation – how close am I?
Thanks, Becky. We’d appreciate any details on how you worked this out, or where we might find more information.
Hi Mary, Your formula is this: SP = calories/30 + 7.sugar + 3.satfat + 8.protein This can be expressed as: SP = (calories + 4.29.sugar + 10.00.satfat – 3.70.protein)/30 So you use a divisor of 30 rather than 33, and multiplers of 4.29, 10.00, and 3.70 instead of 4, 9, 3.2. These numbers are all rather close. Our formula matches the data output from Weight Watchers calculators better, however. For instance, if you input 750 calories with 25 grams of the three nutrients, you’ll get 30 SP from Weight Watchers (we have been told) and 30.15 SP from our formula (which rounds down to 30). However, your formula produces 33.78 (rounding up to 34). Expressing our formula in the same form as yours, we get (rounding to integers): SP = calories/33 + sugar/8 + satfat/4 – protein/10 This produces, for 750/25/25/25 a SmartPoints estimate of 29.60 (rounding up to 30, the same as Weight Watchers calculator).
Give our numbers a try. Dividing by 33 is easy, since it’s the same as 3 SmartPoints per 100 calories. Hi Michael, We assume you mean a version that uses kilojoules instead of calories (since all the other values are already in grams, the unit used on Nutrition Fact labels in the United States).
There are 4.1840 kJ per calorie. So to adjust the formula you’d need to divide kJ by 4.1840 and then proceed as normally. Another way would be to separate out the calories/33 part and change it to kJ/138, adding that to the sum of the other factors divided by 33. So: SP = kJ/138 + ((4 x Sugar + 9 x SatFat – 3.2 x Protein)/ 33) The “Mary’s Formula” version would be: SP = kJ/138 + Sugar/8 + SatFat/4 – Protein/10.
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I used to be able calculate “Points Plus” values from nutrition facts labels (I had found the formula to use in US Patent Application 2 paragraphs 42 and 53). This comes in handy when scanning a bar code is not possible. Thank you for your “Smart Points” formula. There are fewer steps in the calculation versus “Points Plus” so I will be able to use it when needed. Total calories on the nutrition facts labels are calculated using 4 calories per gram for protein and carbs and 9 calories per gram for fat — rounded to the closest 10 calories. Your formula does the same plus it adds the saturated fat and sugar calories a second time and it subtracts 80% of the protein calories. It is interesting to note that in the August 27, 2009, patent applications that formulas to treat saturated fat (see paragraphs 46-48) and sugar from alcohol (see paragraphs 49-52) were already included for use “In certain embodiments”.
Hi Bill, I believe that in the patent application that you cite the PointsPlus formula is Formula 4 between paragraphs 45 and 45, not the ones you mentioned. The C factors there are the macronutrient calories-per-gram factors of 4 for carbs and protein, and 9 for fat. Formula 4 in that application is the same as Formula 10 in the granted patent that we cite in our PointsPlus explanation. We can’t find any forumula in any Weight Watchers patent documentation that includes calories to the right of the equals sign. So we don’t think that the SmartPoints patent has been published yet. Sugar alcohols are used in the Atkins diet: They are not carbs, so they can be used to sweeten food while still technically not breaking any Atkins rules.
This led to commercial desserts made with sugar alcohols, which led to a lot of Atkins dieters binging on sweets and gaining weight. But at the time that those patent applications were filed, Atkins was still big, so Weight Watchers may have been thinking of how to incorporate “support” for sugar alcohols into their diet. But since sugar alcohols are not disclosed on standard Nutrition Facts labels, they would be a pain to deal with.
(0.0305. calories) – (0.098.protein) + (0.12.sugar)+(0.275.sat fat)=SP This is much simpler and seems to work better for me. I have tested extensively using sample values and comparison with the online calculator. Credit goes to Weight Watcher Geek with thanks to Thomas Mills Hinkle. In Excel I used =(0.0305.B2)-(0.098.C2)+(0.12.D2)+(0.275.E2) to get SmartPoints, Where B2, C2, D2 & E2 are the respective cell addresses for calories, protein, sugar and sat fat inputs.
The results were entered in column F (no decimals) and rounded up or down automatically depending upon the closest whole number. Carole: The WWG version of the formula is simply the formula expressed in decimal form. We had that also (if you don’t want to read the entire post, search for “reduced to decimals” on the page).
However, the WWG formula is very slightly off, as you would expect for numbers derived from a linear regression:. The calorie multiplier should be 0.0303, not 0.0305. The protein multiplier should be 0.0970, not 0.0980. The sugar multiplier should be 0.1212, not 0.1200 (although rounded to two decimals, it would be 0.12). The saturated fat multipler should be 0.2727, not 0.2750. The differences, which are all in the third and fourth decimals, will not make a difference in most calculations. Add a column to your Excel spreadsheet and see if our numbers differ.
On the spreadsheet that WWG used to test his formula, line 14 is this: calories = 1,627, sugars = 0, saturated fat = 117, protein = 2 He gets 82 SmartPoints, which he acknowledges in the spreadsheet is incorrect. Our formula produces 81 SmartPoints. That data is very artificial and you’d never eat a food like that, so as a practical matter, either formula will be fine, but we’re pretty sure that ours is exactly right and the WWG formula is off by a small amount. For the WWG formula to be right, it not only has to provide results that are accurate in all cases (which it doesn’t for the line 14 data, for instance), but it also has to be a decimal reduction of a formula of the sort that Weight Watchers has used in their patent applications, which we have produced for our formula. I want to thank Dr Olorun for bringing back my ex that i lost for the past 1 year and 4 months, i contact this great doctor after reading the testimonies of him shared by the people he has help as well, to be honest I never believe but i just made up my mind to contact him and give him a try but he prove me wrong by granting my heart desire, i am really happy that DR Olorun bring back my ex to me, what more can i say but thank you, contact him via his e-mail address: olorunoduduwaspiritualtemple @gm ail.co m. Isn’t the SmartPoints formula patented??? We were not able to locate a patent for SmartPoints, but Weight Watchers in the past has patented their formulas, so we suspect a patent is forthcoming.
A patent would not prevent us from describing how the points are computed (the patent itself does that and is public). A patent infringement occurs only if all the elements of a single claim in the patent are copied.
Without knowing what the patent for SmartPoints says, we can’t know what precise claims they make, but for instance in the past the claims have consisted of a formula description combined with a formula usage context (such as a dietary program in which advice is given, or a computing device or online calculator that uses the formula). In other words, it doesn’t mean anything to say “X is patented.” You have to say “X is patented under patent number Y, and you are copying all the elements of claim number Z of that patent.” At that point you can make a judgment. The patent office is unlikely to approve and the courts are unlikely to uphold a patent containing a claim that Weight Watchers has the exclusive right to simply describe a formula. So, when calculating SP on a non-WW recipe, I would simply just add upp all calories, all sugar, all saturated fat and all proteins and plug them in to the above formula?
Should any ingredients be excluded from the calculation? Like those from SP-free ingredients, like most fruits and vegetables? “All fruits are 0 points on the SmartPoints plan, because, according to the company, participants should eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.” Yes, if you have separate data for fruits at least, exclude it, but you won’t have that information for packaged food, and I don’t think they are thinking of things like peaches in heavy syrup as the ideal fruit anyway. The formula gives a perfect result for almost everything i could find in the app of WW. The only thing where your formula, is for the alcoholic drinks. The points that you find with your formula are too low.
Maybe, you have to add also some bad stuff for the alcohol on top of the sugar en saturated fat. I read already that 1 gram alcohol costs also 7 kcal. So the added something extra for the alcohol, i tried already to find what but I didn’t find it yet. From the editor: Very interesting, Asuncion.
Carbs and protein contain about 4 calories per gram, while fat contains 9. The only other source of calories is alcohol, which contains 7 calories per gram.
You could try a formula of (7 x alcohol grams)/33 and see how that works. Thanks for the post.
I find it useful for giving me an idea of how many smartpoints something will cost me. I have never actually used a pen and paper to find an answer. In terms of actual tracking, I use the Weight Watchers app, since my health insurance pays for me to belong for a year. In deciding what to eat, I assume that for saturated fat calories and sugar, I’ll have to pay double for my calories. I assume that for protein, I get a credit such that smartpoints only reflect 20% of the calories from protein.
As a result, I learned that fat free cheese is an extreme bargain. The only better deal is zero point foods. My formula lacks the accuracy of your formula. However, it helps guide me as to what to eat.
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