Nowadays, just about every edible product – and even Pot Noodle – lists the nutritional content on the label. Even foods made by small “farmhouse” operations seem to have it. My question: do manufacturers have to send off smaples of each of their product to approved labs for analysis, or is there some kind of look-up table based on typical values for the ingredients that go into the food? (E.g. this cake is made from X grams of sugar, Y grams of flour, Z grams of egg etc etc so we can work out the nutrition values in the finished product)
That’s basically it these days.
Nutrition values can change when the product is cooked, so I’d imagine that they have to sample it somehow.
That’s what I was thinking, especially when it comes to vitamin content.
My understanding is that nutrition information is ‘as sold’ and not ‘as prepared’, at least for macronutrients. I’ve noticed quite a few products that have a separate, second column for ‘as prepared’, especially if they ask you to add eggs, milk, fat, and so on (e.g. a boxed cake mix).
Determining calories is very simple - every gram of carbohydrate or protein is 4kcal, every gram of alcohol is 7kcal, and every gram of fat is 9kcal (on US labels, fiber is a carb, but has no calories, and sugar alcohols are also carbs but tend to have less calories, usually around 2kcal/g for the most common ones).
I appreciate that, but the example I gave of a cake was for a shop-bought cake, which requires no further preparation (apart from cutting and stuffing!). Do the manufacturers just work out the nutrition info from what goes into the mixing bowl, or do they have to analyse the finished product?
In speaking with the dietician in our cafeteria, she has a book she can look up the average calories of ingredients in the various concoctions they make.
I don’t know if that is before or after preparation, however.
Eli