Asked 'How many calories are in a chicken Caesar salad?' in five separate sessions, ChatGPT answered 350, 470, 400, 380 and 450 calories (34% variance) while Gemini answered 400, 350, 450, 380 and 420 (29% variance). ChatGPT also asserted with false precision that 'a grilled chicken breast contains 284 calories', and gave virtually identical recovery advice to a 120 lb sedentary woman and a 220 lb heavy-training man.
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Expert: Nutrola research team, Nutrition tracking platform USDA-aligned databases place a standard chicken Caesar salad between 400 and 470 calories depending on dressing amount and croutons — so the real problem with the AI answers is not a single wrong number but inconsistency: the same question produced answers spanning 350-470 calories (ChatGPT) and 350-450 (Gemini) across identical sessions. In a 15-food comparison against USDA FoodData Central, ChatGPT was off by 21% for grilled salmon and 27% for a medium avocado, while other items matched exactly. Chatbots generate statistically probable responses from training patterns rather than looking up a verified database, so they also ignore portion sizes (a 'standard serving' of pasta is 2 oz dry, but most people serve 3-4 oz) and have no memory of a user's stats from one session to the next. The takeaway: certainty has nothing to do with accuracy — for specific calorie counts, meal plans and diet advice, verify chatbot answers against a reliable database. Source: https://nutrola.app/en/blog/5-things-ai-chatbots-get-wrong-about-nutrition-every-time
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