I checked the nutrition label on a packet of McCormick’s meatloaf seasoning and was shocked at the carbohydrate count. It says there are 10 calories and 3 grams of carbs in every serving of the seasoning, and 10 total servings. There are 30 carbs and 100 calories in this little seasoning packet? That can’t be right, can it?
Um, yes. It’s correct. Im not understanding why this seems unbelievable to you. Read the ingredients, dextrose (sugar) is the second thing listed.
Is that in the packet, or as prepared? if you add anything to it that has calories, that could be the “as prepared count,” but even if it isn’t as prepared, it might have a lot of sugar in it. A tablespoon of sugar has about 50 calories. Cornstarch has about 30 calories in a tablespoon, so that would be 80 right there. If it has any kind of stabilizers like gelatin, dried egg, or carrageenan, those will add some calories, so you only need a little over two tablespoons of stuff to get 100 calories.
You are probably a lot better off buying your own seasonings, and mixing them yourself, adding your own cornstarch from a box, if you want to use it, etc., but the one-time layout for a stock of seasonings is expensive, even though they will last a long time. People who eat a lot of meatloaf probably don’t buy for the long term, though. If you can afford a well-stocked spice rack, you can probably afford steak.
The magic of the spice aisle is how you can add 2 cents of spice to 5 cents of sugar and 5 cents of salt, then sell it for 99 cents.
My first thought was “sugar” and, indeed, looking at the ingredient list the first one listed is dextrose, also known as glucose which is a simple sugar. Pure glucose is 116 calories for 30 g.
Edit: multi-ninja’d! That’ll teach me to look things up.
The sugar certainly explains it! Thanks, I hadn’t even thought to check that.
I’m wondering about the starch and “bread” components (gluten, flour) being a greater load in relation to the sugar; I’ll get around, I guess, to checking the caloric load for a guesstimate.
I was going to say no way, but looking at the nutritional info, I think you’re right. Sugars comes in at 1g and total carbs comes in at 3g.
But gluten is a protein! Why isn’t protein listed in the nutrition facts? And after the one gram of sugar, which ingredients have the other two grams of carbs?
Onion - the first ingredient - is mostly carbohydrates. So is malted barley flour.
It surely does contain some nonzero amount of protein, but if it’s below some threshold (1 gram per serving, maybe? 1% of RDA? Not sure), they don’t bother listing it.
I can afford steak, and have a well-stocked spice rack, but I make meatloaf with this meatloaf seasoning a couple times a month. My kids prefer it over steak sometimes, not sure why 
thanks. I didn’t realize onion has so much carbs.
Onion powder is 79% carbohydrate by weight: 57% is starch, 15% fiber, and 7% sugar.
In the U.S., manufacturers are given considerable leeway in estimating and rounding amounts printed on nutrient labels:
The label says 10 calories, but that could mean anything from 5 to 15 calories
It says 1 g of sugar, but that could mean anything from 0.5 to 1.5 g
It says 0 g of fat, but that could mean up to 0.5 g
It says 0 g of fiber, but that could mean up to 0.5 g
It says 3 g of carbohydrates, but that could mean anything from 2.5 to 3.5 g
And, for the truly countable (even at normal consumer interest/concern, although “normal” covers a multitude of pseudo- diet and marketing sins),
…first subtract all of the insoluble fiber (if listed) from the total carbs and total fiber. If more than 5 grams of total fiber remain, you can also subtract half of the remaining fiber from total carbs. Then look at the sugar alcohols. If there are more than 5 grams of sugar alcohols, subtract half that amount from the total carbohydrates. If erythritol is the only sugar alcohol listed, you may not subtract any sugar alcohols.
Voila: net carbs. Neither defined nor approved, methodologically or practically, by the American Diabetes Society, but handy for quick self-justification when reading a label of borderline allowable carb intake.
See cite for more: Home
A mixture of 2.2 g of onion powder, 1 g of dextrose, and 0.8 grams of salt would have a nutrient profile consistent with the label. This mixture would have an actual calorie count of 12 calories per serving, which is within the rounding allowances. It’s probably safe to assume the rest of the ingredients don’t significantly affect the nutrient profile of the product even if they do affect the taste and cooking properties.
Think about how sweet slowly simmered onions are–a mess of them browned and juicy is rightly called “onion marmalade.”
Sweet onion varieties only increase the sugar content.
Yeah, but I could see someone thinking that, when not cooked, it was just indigestible fiber.
Not disagreeing with the larger point about onions being surprisingly sweet, but you do actually add sugar to the onions to make onion marmalade.
While going down the spice aisle in the grocery store last night this thread popped into mind and I bought a packet of the meatloaf mix. The ingredient list is not the same as the list in the link above; the list on the package has dextrose first, onion second.