How are companies able to measure the amount of calories and composition of the packaged food they are selling? How do we as consumers know it’s accurate?
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They use a device called a caloric bomb. It is basically a tiny little sealed chamber. They put a certain amount of the food in there, heat it, and then once it starts to burn they measure the amount of heat given off by the burning. This tells them exactly how many calories are in the food.
One thing to note is they are allowed per the FDA to have a 20% discrepancy in either direction. So a food labeled as 100 calories could be anywhere between 80-120 calories.
/u/The_D20_is_cast has it for the first part of your question. Caloric bombs are also known as bomb calorimeters if you want more info. As for how we know its accurate, its because the FDA (or equivalent food regulatory agency in other countries) requires it to be accurate, and companies can be fined for presenting incorrect nutritional information.
In the US and most developed countries, the FDA (or equivalent agency) sets protocols and standards for measuring the nutrition content of food.
Since these standards are well known, anyone with the expertise and resources can repeat these tests to verify, and if the producer is lying, they would face both public backlash and government sanctions.
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