This weekend my sister baked me a delicious chocolate cake from scratch for my birthday.  Before we sliced it my dad actually carried it around the room so people could take turns lifting the pan because the cake was so incredibly heavy!  Instinct or common sense told us that this was a very high calorie treat.  You can use this same weighing technique to determine the relative calorie counts of baked goods when you’re shopping at the grocery store or bakery.

A slice of standard store-bought bread weighs about 1 ounce and contains about 80 calories.  If you lift two similar sized loaves of bread, the lighter one will have fewer calories per slice.

Other baked goods such as fruit/nut breads or muffins generally contain about 125 calories per ounce.  Even if the label describes it as all natural and healthy, a nice 5 ounce bran muffin could contain as much as 625 calories!  So when deciding between two of these higher calorie goodies, lift them and compare the weights to make the best choice.  Or split one muffin between 2 or 3 friends!

Back to the weekend:  did I eat any of the cake?  Of course I did!  After all, it was my birthday, my sister made it for me, and I am a chocolate fiend!  But I had one small piece, another piece the next day, then left the remainder at my dad’s house when I came home!