Nutritional Labels Incomplete. What Is The Reason?
Posted by Zolly | Under Nutrition Monday Nov 9, 2009Hello, my question is a little bit long. If you’d like to know what I’m asking before reading all this, the actual question is at the bottom of the post. Thanks for reading!
I’m a little confused. Today I bought a 30 oz jar of raw mixed nuts from Target. The brand is Archer foods (nutritional label to the right http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-c… Reading the label, the nutritional value seems little better than a Sunny D orange drink. Per 28 gram serving, the nuts fulfill only 2% of the daily vitamin c requirement, 4% of the daily calcium requirement and only 8% of the daily iron requirement. Now, I was under the impression that raw nuts contained lots of minerals, specifically magnesium-the mineral I’m trying to keep from being deficient in.
So, I did a little bit of research on the actual nutritional value of some of the nuts found in my jar. The results have me befuddled. I picked the mineral magnesium in my research, but I’m sure the question I have extends to every mineral that raw nuts have. There is no mention of any minerals found in these nuts.
According to the Office of Dietary Supplements (http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/magnesi… the Recommended Dietary Allowance of magnesium for adults aged 19-30 is 400 mg per day.
According to the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cg… the amount of magnesium found in:
28.35g of raw cashews is 83 mg.
28.35 g of raw almonds is 76 mg
28.35 g of raw hazelnuts is 46 mg
28.35 g of raw walnuts is 45 mg
28.35 g of raw pistachios is 34 mg
One single serving of the Archer Raw Mixed Nuts is 28 grams. Now let us work with that serving and figure out how much Magnesium is in the serving. Dividing every nut’s amount of magnesium by five and adding the results should give us this much magnesium:
16.6mg from cashews
15.2 mg from almonds
9.2 mg from hazelnuts
9.0 mg from walnuts
6.8 mg from pistachios
Now, according to these numbers, there should be 58.6 mg of magnesium in every serving of the mixed nuts I bought, which should add up to 14.65% of the RDA.
Now the question-why has this significant amount of nutritional information has been omitted? Do Archer Farms Raw Mixed Nuts not contain any magnesium, or any other mineral? Or do they choose not to list this information? I’m under the impression that raw nuts are not altered in any way, so what gives? Is Archer that lazy to not list nutritional information? It would seem dumb, as being nutritious is the selling point here, isn’t it?
Now, I’ve noticed this phenomena on various nutritional labels. The mixed nuts is the first time I’ve decided to check this out. Are companies leaving off nutritional information, or do their products actually lack the vitamins and minerals that are supposed to be in their products?
all packaged food in USa HAS to have a nutritional label, even if what they print is incorrect.
One of my favourite labels is on Pam cooking spray.
It’s a cooking oil in spray form- the nutritional label says o calories per spray.It is a joke.
Of course there are calories in it.
There are so many inconsistencies in food labelling, it’s ridiculous. Another one I love is the 98% Fat Free Cream of Mushroom soup by Campbells.
I love this soup, it’s hardly soup infact, it’s more like flour with mushrooms attached, but it’s my guilty peasure- the fat free one is much creamier.
The label says each 100gms is 70 calories, and out of that, the fat calories are 25 of those same calories.SO that means it is NOT 99%fat free, and instead, should be labelled 40% fat .
So, you are doing the right thing with your own research.
Magnesium is found in Brazil nuts and bananas a lot. As fas as the labelling goes, write a complaint letter to Target and you’ll get some toekns maybe.
My letter to Campbells did nothing.
Why do they put some not all nutirents?
Well al I can figure, is that whoever write these labels up is a person just plike you or I, so maybe that guy didn’t think magnesium was interesting.