It had been a long and arduous Sunday night meeting for the members of the University Press Club. Midterms loomed, work piled up, and the passive voice was used. And above all, we were hungry.

Yup. U-Store time.

Veep David Walter ’11 led the charge (“the egg rolls are only $2!“) Having already eaten our way through all of Roommate Steve‘s blueberry Pop-Tarts in a regrettable yet delicious late night binge, we headed over to the toaster pastry section to see about some replacement snacks.

(Steve, if you’re reading this, I haven’t actually bought you more Pop-Tarts yet. Sorry about that. I feel bad.)

Coolly navigating our way through the myriad Pop-Tart options, we found ourselves contemplating strawberry, both in its frosted and unfrosted varieties. Naturally, we wanted to see how much worse the frosting was for us.

And that’s when things got weird. Because the Strawberry Frosted Pop-Tarts were a full 10 calories less per serving than their unfrosted cousins.

More confusion after the jump?

We thought we had to be misreading the box. Surely, frosting couldn’t count for negative calories! Could it?

But no, the portions were the same – one pastry each. 210 calories for the unfrosted, only 200 for the frosted. What was going on?

We took to the internet. Desperately trying ridiculous search terms on Google, we were unable to find an answer (although we’re not alone in noticing the phenomenon. Apparently, the same thing happens with frosted and unfrosted Mini-Wheat cereal.)

Whole blogs have sprouted over the mystery. And the guys at Kellogg’s haven’t called back. But fear not, dear reader(s) (ah, using the plural to reference readership – a boy can dream, right?) – we will get to the bottom of this.