Since last April, Kristie Carlson from Kildeer has lost more than 35 pounds. The secret to her success? She walks 45 minutes every day and she watches what she eats. Carlson diligently reads food labels to help her count calories, but she’s skeptical about the nutrition information.
“How can a tiny half-cup serving of snack mix have 150 calories?,” she asked. “I’d love to know who makes this stuff up.”
Hard as they may be to swallow, the nutrient numbers on food labels, some restaurant menus, and attached to cookbook, newspaper and magazine recipes are not pulled out of a hat. Most of them come from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Whose facts are these, anyway?
“We currently have the largest database in the world, with information on 100 nutrients for over 7,500 foods,” says Joanne Holden, research leader at the USDA’s Nutrient Data Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. For more than a century, the lab and its predecessors have been providing information on the nutrient content of foods consumed in the United States. The lab’s main purpose is to manage databases, including the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, the “gold standard” for nutritionists, the food industry and just about anyone who wants to know about the nutrients in the food they’re eating.
The Nutrient Data Laboratory (NDL) gets its facts in four ways, Holden said. The lab will hire independent labs to analyze a particular food. A second source is commodity groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Pork Producers Council or the National Egg Board, which conduct updates on their products. (For example, a few years ago NDL collaborated with the Egg Board on a study that revealed eggs were 22 percent lower in cholesterol than previously listed.) The NDL also takes data from scientific literature and occasionally derives nutrient values for certain mixed-dish foods like chicken pot pie or beef stew using its own data.
“With the food supply constantly changing and chemical analysis procedures constantly improving,” Holden said, “we update foods based on industry changes and consumer requests.”
The government is not the only source of accurate food databases. Many large food companies maintain their own. As a nutrition research scientist for Quaker Oats’ snack group division, Sara Murphy oversees a product’s development and its nutrient analysis. She also helps maintain a database for each product, which helps the company comply with labeling requirements. As can other companies, Quaker can submit nutrient data to the governement’s Standard Reference database.
Can you trust the numbers?
Constance Geiger, an assistant professor of foods and nutrition at the University of Utah, where she has become an expert on food labeling, loosely grades the trustworthiness of nutrition information based on where it appears. The database numbers start out being quite accurate, she said, but their ultimate helpfulness “really depends on how they’re used and where the actual numbers came from.” Geiger gives this guidance for reading and interpreting nutrition information in places where it’s most likely to appear.
– Food labels: “You can believe with confidence the numbers you see on the Nutrition Facts panel of food labels,” Geiger said, because food manufacturers have to comply with strict legal guidelines on how nutrients must be listed. It is possible for a product to publish data slightly different from the USDA’s because labeling laws allow rounding up or down.
– Restaurant menus: Geiger also believes that the nutrition information on restaurant menus is trustworthy. “If an item makes a nutrient claim, the FDA does require the restaurant to display the nutrition information” for that particular nutrient. For example, if a menu offered low-fat lasagna, the restaurant would have to list the grams of fat in the lasagna. The most reliable nutrition data comes from major fast-food chains, Geiger says, because they hire independent labs to conduct nutrient analysis; other restaurants likely rely on the Standard Reference database or a consultant using a software program.
– Recipes in cookbooks, newspapers and national magazines: These sources have the potential to be least reliable, Geiger said. “If you see nutrition “investigate who provided the numbers.” Were the nutrient values calculated by a registered dietitian with access to current information? Does it list as its source the 12th edition of the USDA’s Standard Reference? If not, who knows where the numbers came from?
RELIABLE RESOURCES
In addition to food labels, other sources of accurate nutrition numbers exist.
WEB SITES
USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory(www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp). This site contains all of the current databases maintained by the government, including the 12th edition of the Standard Reference. You can download the databases to your own computer or use it to look up specific foods on-line.
Nutrition Analysis Tool(www.ag.uiuc.edu/food-lab/). Developed by the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, this free Web-based program allows you to analyze specific foods for a variety of nutrients.
COMPUTER PROGRAMS
Food Processor Dietary Analysis Program(version 7.3) by ESHA (503-585-6242). This CD-ROM program, compatible with Windows 95 and 98, has an extensive database that includes the Standard Reference. This is the program used to analyze recipes at the Chicago Tribune. It costs $549 plus $12 shipping, plus an annual update fee of about $150.
MasterCook by Sierra. This is one of the easiest and most cost-effective programs out there. The database, based on the Standard Reference, contains more than 2,500 foods and can analyze recipes as well as diets. It’s at local software stores for about $50.
BOOKS
Bowes & Church’s Food Values of Portions Commonly Used, 17th edition.By Jean A.T. Pennington (Lippincott). This is a standard on dietitians’ shelves. It includes data for most major foods and includes supplemental tables for hard-to-find nutrients. About $36 at bookstores.
The Complete Book of Food Counts, by Corinne T. Netzer (MJF Books). This book is handy but includes data for only a few main nutrients: calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, cholesterol, sodium and fiber. It costs $7.50 at bookstores.
