TIL that there's an allowed 20% margin of error in accuracy per the FDA.
That seems way bigger than it needs to be ...
this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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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.
The only way to get an accurate reading on calorie count is to burn it. 1 kilocalorie (nutritional calorie) can increase the temperature of 1kg of water by 1 C°
But burning isn't how your body utilizes the calories. Some things burn just fine yet are entirely useless as a (human) food source, like wood. This complicates things.
For instance, we still don't know if our bodies can actually use ethanol (drinking alcohol) as a fuel source. Is that vodka shot adding to your daily calorie intake?
Vodka’s back on the menu, boys!
It was off the menu?
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Sure, but that is measuring calorie content, not what your body can absorb
Exactly, which makes the whole endeavour more of a guessing game than a science.
I think using trial and error to see what works for your body is a pretty scientific approach
I mean there’s no way that they’re gonna be able to do metrics for every person since every person is built differently so there has to be a common standard. Or you you saying that certain types of calories are burned the same way for all people?
I'm just saying it's not that simple.
What? Calorie is a perfectly accurate method of measurement. Just because your body might absorb more or less than the next person doesn't change the amount of calories in a food.
Measuring calories in food is not accurate. Measuring calories by burning fuel is, but that's not how we use food.
Not to mention, even if you can accurately measure calories in a specific serving, companies produce thousands and thousands of servings per day. They can't accurately measure all of them. And ironically, the more 'natural' the food is, the less accurately they can measure the nutritional value: protein paste is going to be a lot more predictable than pasture-raised chickens.
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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).
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.
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.
And that limit wouldn't be possible to be zero. We don't live in a sterile vacuum so I'm good with it
We don't live in a sterile vacuum
Speak for yourself, buddy!
I already knew this stuff, the idea that everything needs to be bleached clean is stupid, even when it comes to food.
Insects are just extra protein! Nom!
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.
Moat likely it is either breading or fillers that means there is less chicken than you would expect.
I haven't seen a moat in at least the past 100 years, so I'd say no, moat not likely.
I haven't seen a moat in at least the last 100 years
This is a you problem pal. I personally have a moat defense system installed around my home and also around each individual room within the home with draw bridges for isolation in case of emergency. Safety is just common sense.
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breading
Well, you won't get that number by using a wheat-based filling either.
Easy, 5% chicken and the 95% is bread and other garbage. There is "chicken" in there somewhere
It's probably ground up tendons and shit. Technically chicken but not protein.
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What is the serving size?
Without knowing that, it's impossible to make a judgment about how "high" the protein is.
OC is probably from an EU county where everything has to normalized to p. 100g because everything else is just insane.
You'd be better off with falafel bites at that rate
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.
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