TIL that there's an allowed 20% margin of error in accuracy per the FDA.
That seems way bigger than it needs to be ...
We can't even measure calories accurately, never mind predicting how much your specific body will actually absorb. Maybe we could be more accurate with vitamins and stuff, but I dunno.
For highly processed foods, I agree.
But for relatively unprocessed foods, seems completely reasonable to me at first glance. The relative sugar content of, say, an apple, is dependent on all sorts of parameters (sun, water, soil...). The gluten content of wheat, iron content of vegetables, all of these things are variable. The more "natural" a food is, the higher the variability (as opposed to, say, artificial candy --- that should be pretty uniform).
Fun fact: the FDA also has limits on how many rodent hairs, insect parts, mold and so forth can be in food. The limit is not zero.
Why doesn’t the FDA require companies to put a range instead of an exact number then?
Actual reason? Not sure because I wasn't around for the comment period.
Likely reason? People are terrible at making decisions based on ranges or anything more complex than a single number. They aren't even that good at a single number.
Since mixed things like trail mix can have some variety in ratio from bag to bag, going with an average and some variance means having some kind of flexibility. Then there are vegetables and other plants that can vary wildly too.
But what about something like gummy bears where the whole thing is very consistent? Can't have different rules for different foods, because companies will tie the whole thing up in court.
So the end result is a rule that allows flexibility for the things that actually need it that is also applied to everything else for simplicity.
There are these chicken bites that advertise “high in protein!” on the pack, then you look and see it’s 9 grams…
Like, how do you make chicken bites have only 9 grams of protein??
They’re actively trying to remove protein from the chicken to make it that low.
You'd be better off with falafel bites at that rate
What is the serving size?
Without knowing that, it's impossible to make a judgment about how "high" the protein is.hen you look and see it’s 9 grams…
Like, how do you make chicken bites have only 9 grams of protein??
It's not actual chicken, that's how.
The same goes for eu food labels.
It makes sense though. Say you claim there's 10g per 100g of something in your product. Any random scoop of 100g is not always equal. The 20% range means that any random scoop of 100grams must contain between 12 and 8 grams of something.
Due to personell shortages, this will obviously not be tested enough. But ideally it is and when an average of a dundred tests comes out at something other that 10grams per 100 gram, than they'll have to change it. I gues... I'm don't know the procedures.
(Tolerancetable on page 7)
Here's an the eu regulation on food labels. Vitamins and minerals even have a lowerbound of 50 % and an upperboud of 35% and 45% respectively.
Somehow "8 or 12" sounds a lot better than "20% variance"
Statistically, it will average out, unless they use the margin to actively use cheaper ingredients
I think we all know that if the numbers can be fudged they will be.
I don't know if people look that closely at the nutritional values that it if worth it to manipulate them for advertising. I think the bigger effect is that they don't have to quality check that hard and can have a little more of this or that. Producing consistently is hard. But maybe it's a little bit of both.
And this is another reason why avoiding packaged food is best.
Well, that's kinda besides the point right? The composition of "natural" food has huge variation. There is no "nutritional content of a banana." There's the nutritional content of this banana, of that banana, of an unripe banana, of a ripe banana, of an overripe banana...but these can be hugely different. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266066/
Yea I love when my food rots 3 days after I purchase it.
If you’re so nutritionally conscious as to track macros, why are you eating processed food?
"No one is allowed a cookie if they track macros!" >:0
I mean, just eat the occasional cookie. Don’t worry about the macros in it. Tracking macros is never going to be precise but you can get a general idea if you’re getting the right amounts. But, if you’re getting most or a lot of your nutrition from processed food, you’re probably tracking the wrong thing.
Unless it's meat from a butcher or produce, it has a nutritional label.
