Now there’s a surprise!

Researchers from Britain’s Office for National Statistics found people wildly underestimate how much they eat. They used a “gold standard” technique to measure energy expenditure, in which participants drink water containing trackable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen. The team then compared what 200 participants in the National Diet and Nutrition Survey reported about their diets with their actual intakes – and discovered that, on average, they consumed 50% more calories than reported.