“New year, new me!” a lot of people like to say. When the New Year began a few months ago, everyone of course either made resolutions, or felt like they had another fresh start with anything. Something that a lot of people of all ages, but especially teen girls, tend to immediately jump to with a new year is incorporating a healthy lifestyle into their everyday routine. Some of the components of a “healthy lifestyle” include regular exercise, and having a balanced but hearty diet. When it comes to a healthy diet though, most people are primarily concerned about the calorie count in what they’re picking up to eat.

The Food and Drug Administration has always required most packaged foods to list their calories on packaging labels, and The Department of Health in New York City also requires most chain restaurants to have a calorie count of foods posted on their menus.

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Now a national program along the lines of those rules is coming our way, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. But a good question is, how accurate are all of these required calorie counts? No one actually verifies how accurate these calorie listings are, according to the F.D.A. Food vendors are actually allowed to list whatever numbers they want, unless someone catches them. So when wanting to have a healthy diet, are we really secretly eating more than we want to be? This is the question obsessive calorie counter and detective Casey Neistat wanted to answer.

Neistat picked out five items he would consume in an average day: a muffin, a tofu sandwich, a Subway sandwich, a Starbucks Frappuccino and a Chipotle burrito. Then with the help of two food scientists and a bomb calorimeter device, he tested the calorie content of each item. It took more than an hour per sample, but the results made the slow process worth it.

Four out of the five items tested had more calories than their labels reported, adding up to 550 calories; Neistat would be putting on an extra pound of body weight over the course of a week if he unknowingly consumed those extra calories every day.

Starbucks and Chipotle both explained that their products are made by hand at their shops, making small variations in calories. They measure their calories on paper by adding up the calories of each ingredient, as to measuring them in a lab like Neistat did.

“The amount of calories you consume, you can’t just know from looking at it or guestimating, unless you know every single ingredient, every single serving, like you actually weigh each portion so you know exactly how many grams there are,” says Tumblr health guru Essena O’Neill. “Counting calories is something I do believe is good for some people that are extremely overweight and really do need to worry about eating properly, but for girls that I guess aren’t obese or such, it is a waste of time. You can look at a meal and know if it’s healthy or not! Counting calories… you just can’t do it properly, you can’t do it legitimately.”

So in conclusion, after all of this information and studies, our current system for regulating calories is just unbelievably inadequate. Don’t waste your time and brain space trying to budget your diet from nutrition labels, but research more on how to have a healthy diet and exercise plan that works for you!