This is a guest blog post by Carol Harvey, director of nutrition labeling at Palate Works.

Nutrition Facts labels look so official in that bold, uniform format. They must be correct… and are verified by FDA, right?

While FDA regulates nutrition labeling, they do not pre-approve nutrition panels, nor do they spend much time looking for inaccurate ones. With thousands of new products hitting the shelves every year, it would take a massively larger FDA budget. The result is something of a labeling Wild West in the food aisles and online.

Nutrition Facts data is generated one of two ways:  database analysis of the recipe (with software), or chemical analysis of an actual sample of the food (in a laboratory). Both have limitations and are not immune to human error, but in the hands of the inexperienced (or deceitful), database analysis is much less reliable. It is also much cheaper than a lab (about 15% of the cost or less), so it tends to be the choice of restaurants and smaller food companies, many of whom do it themselves with no knowledge of labeling regulations, nutrition, or what correct data should look like.

There are many ways that database analysis can result in imprecise, inaccurate, or simply wrong nutrition data. Fortunately, some are obvious enough to spot without plunking down a small fortune for chemical analysis.

Here are six examples of common nutrition label errors:

1. Bad Math. In the  cookie nutrition panel below, the total carbohydrate count is less than the sum of its parts. This is a mathematical impossibility, because both sugar and fiber should be included in total carbs. This mistake, probably a data entry error that wasn’t caught,  is not uncommon on food labels. The cookie shows only 2 grams of carbohydrate, even though there are 8 grams of sugar. Oops. Carbs here must be at least 10 g (sugar + fiber, plus the digestible carbs from the flour would need to be included).

2. No common (non-weight) serving size equivalent (e.g., “one cookie,” or “¼ cup,” or “12 chips”) – a good indication the serving size is probably incorrect. The cookie from the previous example has a serving size of  “2/25 lbs” – aka 1.28 oz, even though they already give the serving weight in grams, as required. However, the cookies I bought actually weigh 1 oz each, and there are 9 per container rather than 8. Serving size should be denoted as “one cookie (28 g)”.

3. Too much Vitamin C: A cooked or processed food that doesn’t have vitamin C (ascorbic acid) added, but shows 10% DV or more for vitamin C. This is a common error among those who use database analysis and don’t realize that the vitamin content for raw food (what’s found in the database) is not the same as that for the cooked/final version (vitamin C is fairly unstable in heat, water, etc.). One company’s apple pie at Whole Foods shows an astounding 160% DV for vitamin C, when no listed ingredient contains any significant amounts. Even raw apples provide very little vitamin C.

Here’s an example from a juice product. Apple juice is listed as the only ingredient, but vitamin C content is impossibly high. In addition, the rounding is incorrect (e.g., any protein or fiber under 0.5 g is insignificant and should show as 0 g):

4. Where’s the Salt? How could a product with many sodium-containing ingredients show 0 grams of sodium on the Nutrition Facts panel? If sodium appears in the ingredient listing, a product will have at least 5 g (the minimum that needs to be declared), plus sodium is naturally-occurring in many plant foods. These donut holes win the prize for most errors (e.g., serving size is too small, and where’s the pumpkin?), but if we focus on sodium, notice it is in the ingredients, but sodium is 0 in the nutrition panel:

5. Fried and Forgotten. Any fried product made by a small company or restaurant is almost guaranteed to have incorrect calorie and fat data, simply because database analysis cannot calculate how much fat is left on a food after frying, and no one really wants to (nor can they very accurately) measure the oil before and after cooking to find out. Magazines and newspapers often understate fat content in recipes for the same reason.

6. Missing Vitamins. Bad nutrition data can go both ways. Occasionally (more often than you’d think), nutrition labels underreport good nutrients, especially vitamin A. Many foods are well endowed with vitamin A precursors such as beta-carotene – sweet potatoes, pumpkin, apricots, etc. (generally anything orange/yellow). It’s a fairly stable nutrient, so even with some cooking/processing it survives. Foods in which it may be underreported include sweet potato chips, baked goods with pumpkin or apricots, and juices made with apricot, papaya, etc.

The same company with the impossible amount of vitamin C in its apple juice, shortchanges their apricot juice by showing less than 2% of the DV for vitamin A.

These are all products that have been on store shelves (in Whole Foods, etc.) for at least a couple years – plenty of time for someone to have noticed… if that was anyone’s job.

Carol Harvey has been a nutrition labeling and product development consultant for over 15 years. She can be reached at palatemail[AT] yahoo [DOT] com.

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