[davef]

A non-diabetic work colleague has just come to me for me to have a look at food label which he was finding confusing, but it has me confused too.

It's for a product called Knorr Quick Lunch - Spaghetti Bolognese. Which is a "pot" style product that add boiling water to.

What is confusing us is that the pot is clearly labeled as being 83g, yet when we look the food label that for example Carbs per 100g (prepared) is 16.5g, but per pack it is 48.1g, bearing in mind the pack is 83g, and yet it is showing higher numbers than per 100g. We are guessing that when the say prepared it means that when you add water, the 83g pack becomes 100g, but where do the carbs (and others) go if that's the case, surely if the pack has 48.1 carbs and you add water, there are still 48.1g carbs but some suspended in the water?

[cyberus]

Ignore the per 100g part .. that's so you can compare one product to another without dealing with "servings" , a "standardized reference" as it were. The per pack (serving) is the one you want for "how many carbs are in this thing".
Just doing quick math in my head I'd hazard that the pack is 300g prepared since the 100g is 1/3 the pack total ignoring rounding

[Lizzie G]

i agree with cyberus. in general things like pasta, noodles etc tend to hydrate to about 3 times their dry weight so effectively the serving quoted is about 1/3 of the hydrated pack.....raising another of those brilliant 'per pack' things where manufacturers quote fat, carbs calories (not to mention salt and additives) etc 'per serving' which of course is nowhere near a real serving....just another reason to avoid prepackaged food IMO.....

[davef]

What you guys have said makes perfect sense. I have to say I wouldn't touch that type of prepackaged stuff, I can think of lots of really nice food I could make with less than 48g carbs, rather than "squandering" the carbs on something like the prepacked stuff.

[cyberus]

Originally Posted by Lizzie G

i agree with cyberus. in general things like pasta, noodles etc tend to hydrate to about 3 times their dry weight so effectively the serving quoted is about 1/3 of the hydrated pack.....raising another of those brilliant 'per pack' things where manufacturers quote fat, carbs calories (not to mention salt and additives) etc 'per serving' which of course is nowhere near a real serving....just another reason to avoid prepackaged food IMO.....

That wasn't it.

100g is a nutritional data base point avoiding the games manufacturers play with "servings" and size thereof.

If you have 2 items, one with a 10g carb per serving with 2.25 servings per package and one with 13g carb per serving with 1.75 servings per pack most people would need a calculator to decide which is better. Using the "standard" 100g data you can tell at a glance.

To bad its not a standard everywhere.

[Scrabblechick]

That does actually make sense! I wish it were a standard on food labels, myself.