Driving to Sydney last week I heard on the radio about KFC’s new “bunless” burger which includes 2 chicken fillets, cheese and bacon delivering a massive 2,5ookJ and around 35g of fat. A lot of the listener feedback was negative as you would expect. My daughter (who was in the car with me) asked the question “How do they work out how much fat is in the food?” After providing the answer I started to think about how correct is the nutritional information that food companies put on their food packaging?
There are many people (myself included) that use this food labelling in the quest to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. The nutritional data allows an informed decision to be made by the consumer around whether or not to eat the product. The majority of standards (and the law) requires the food company to provide the consumer with the nutritional data of the product. There are two ways in which nutritional information can be worked out. The first way is to have a sample of the actual food sent to a laboratory and analysed. The second way, and most common method, is to calculate the information based on the raw materials and product recipe. The calculation method is definitely more cost effective if there are a large number of products requiring nutritional information.
There are free calculators and paid calculators available for the food industry to use. The FSANZ (Food Standards Australia New Zealand) calculator can be accessed for free at Nutrition Panel Calculator. I prefer to use a program called Foodworks to calculate both nutritional information and ingredient listings.
Whatever program that you decide to use please make sure the information you are producing is accurate. Remember, people are making dietary decisions based on the information that is provided on the product labelling. In the coming weeks we will host a webinar on how to calculate your nutritional information correctly. To register your interest please contact us.
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