nutrition labels

[darkoshi]

Starting in the last 4 years or so, the requirements for food nutrition labels in the U.S. have changed:
4 Major Changes Are Coming To Food Nutrition Labels (May 2016)
Changes to the Nutrition Facts Label: What Parents Need to Know (April 2020)

The Nutrition Facts Label: Its History, Purpose and Updates (March 2020)

There are four vitamins and minerals that are required to be listed on every updated Nutrition Facts label: vitamin D, calcium, iron and potassium. While calcium and iron were also required before the latest update, vitamin D and potassium are new to the list, replacing vitamins A and C. The swap was made because Americans get enough vitamin A and C in their diet but fall short on vitamin D and potassium.

So Vitamin A and C are usually no longer listed, which I did not realize. But what about all the other vitamins and minerals? I seem to recall that labels used to list many other vitamins and minerals too, didn't they? Now they hardly ever do.

There have been multiple times over the last few years where I've looked at the nutrition label on some product that I'd expect to be healthy, such as vegetables or fruit, and have thought to myself, "According to this it has basically no vitamins or minerals at all, so it must not be that healthy after all. Fruit and vegetables are overrated."

I wonder if other people have had that reaction too.


Update, 2021/01/23: I didn't think to mention it before, but it was a false expectation of mine which caused that reaction. I expected that if a product had a measurable amount of certain vitamins or minerals, that those amounts would normally be listed on the label. I thought they would only be omitted when they weren't present at more than trace levels.

Comments

[conuly]

...do fruits and vegetables even come with nutrition labels!?

[darkoshi]

Frozen and canned ones. And the tubs of greens in the fresh vegetables section.

For instance, according to the labels of these items I have, per serving:
Frozen peas: Has no vitamins, 2% calcium, 6% iron, 2% potassium.
Frozen corn: Has no vitamins, 2% calcium, 0% iron, 4% potassium.
Canned corn: Has no vitamins, 0% calcium, 2% iron, 2% potassium.
Canned pineapple: Has no vitamins, 2% calcium, 0% iron, 4% potassium.
Canned pears: Has no vitamins, 2% calcium, 0% iron, 2% potassium.
Canned pasta sauce: Has no vitamins, 0% calcium, 6% iron, 6% potassium.

Canned spinach (Delhi Saag) - this one still has the old-style label:
has 90% Vit A, 0% Vit C, 8% calcium, 6% iron.
This one sounds much healthier than the rest because of that 90% Vit A, even though for all I know some of the others may be high in Vit A or C or other vitamins too, but they aren't listed.

Peanut Butter - they opted to include some non-required vitamins on this one and it therefore sounds much healthier to me than the above fruits and vegetables, except the spinach:
has 0% Vit D, 2% calcium, 6% iron, 4% potassium, 15% Vit E, 35% Niacin.

Dry-roasted Peanuts - ditto:
has 0% Vit D, 0% calcium, 2% iron, 4% potassium, 10% Vit E, 20% Niacin, 10% magnesium, 10% copper, 20% manganese.

Based on that, the peanuts sound the healthiest! They're high in fiber and low in sugar too.

[conuly]

Peanuts are pretty healthy if you're not allergic to them and not on a very low-cal or low-carb diet.

For stuff like that, have you ever looked at https://nutritiondata.self.com/ ?

Frozen peas: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2525/2

Scroll down past the stuff that still requires Flash (!?), and then you get a neat little nutrition label. One cup of frozen peas - which is a lot of frozen peas - contains a significant percentage of your RDA of vitamins A, C, and K, and quite a lot of thiamin and folate. It also has 25% of your daily RDA of fiber.

[darkoshi]

That's good to see about the peas. And corn too. Sometimes I look up info on sites like if I'm curious about something in particular, but not in general.

I've always been taught that fruit and vegetables are healthy, but I guess these new labels really have been taking their toll on me. That's my point here - that if you go by the new labels, they make it seem like healthy food isn't so great at all.

I vaguely recall looking at one of those tubs of greens in the vegetable section and thinking to myself, no vitamins? Why should I pay that price for this when it hardly has any vitamins or minerals anyway? And I'm vegan! If the labels have affected me that much, how much worse might they be for other people?

[conuly]

It's weird, I was always taught that if it had to tell you what vitamins and minerals it contained, it probably wasn't very healthful at all.

[conuly]

But my family always did a lot of buying from the edges - lots of time in the produce section, hardly any time anywhere else.

[duskpeterson]

Manufacturers aren't required to list all the vitamins and minerals, which is why you're not seeing them on all those cans of vitamin-rich veggies and fruits. But some manufacturers - particularly the ones who are trying to distract customers from the fact that their foods have an insane amount of fat and sodium and sugar - choose to list all the vitamins and minerals. Cereal manufacturers, who *add* vitamins and minerals to their cereals, are particularly fond of doing this.

[darkoshi]

Yes, I've noticed that with the cereals. The cereals I tend to buy use whole grains, aren't enriched and only list the required nutrients, but some of them are also fairly high in sugar.

[lhexan]

I've wondered whether there was something off about the FDA's recommended level of potassium, since you'd have to eat a rather specialized diet to reach 100%. Then I looked up what the RDA actually means, and it's the amount sufficient to meet the dietary needs of 98% of the population (source "Perspectives in Nutrition," a textbook; backed up by Wikipedia). So, for most nutrients you're safe consuming far less, and if there's a small subset of the population that needs far more of a nutrient than normal, they can greatly throw off the number. The EAR value is more representative, but not listed on labels, and in the case of potassium I was surprised to find it undetermined (source).

[darkoshi]

I mostly use the numbers on the labels for comparison purposes between different items, rather than trying to make sure what I eat adds up to 100% of everything. (I take vitamins anyway, to be on the safe side.) But you're right, the %s listed are generalizations, and not to be taken as specific to individuals.

That is another difference in current labels versus the ones I remember from the past: The old ones used to mention RDA, or Percent of Recommended Daily Allowance, while the new ones mention DV or % Daily Value. I'd thought it was simply a new term for the same thing... which based on the following I think it is, but it's also more complicated than that:
https://blog.watson-inc.com/marketing/rda-vs.-rdi-vs.-dv-how-are-they-different

I did a search to find examples of food labels from the 1970s and 1980s to compare against my memories, but not many of the results indicate a specific time period and also have legible images of the nutrition facts section.

[lhexan]

The gist of it seems to be: the RDA is the scientific consensus, the RDI is what's given in legislation/regulation, and the DV encompasses stuff that doesn't have an RDA, like fiber and fat. *smiles* Thanks for the link.

The next time I see a doctor I plan to ask whether there's a good way to check for vitamin deficiencies, without having a specific one in mind. So far I've found a half-dozen different deficiencies that list "fatigue" as a symptom. But if I tried supplements for all of them my kidneys and liver would not appreciate the burden. :p