June 8, 2020 - 8:02pm
Diastatic Malt - Math Help
Please see image below. The serving size is 100 grams, but when adding each of individual weights, things don’t add up.
Thanks,
Danny
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Please see image below. The serving size is 100 grams, but when adding each of individual weights, things don’t add up.
Thanks,
Danny
Hi, Danny!
First off, I feel obliged to say that I am not a nutritionist. I don’t even play one on TV.
If I’m correct about what you are asking, it looks like you are wondering why if a serving is 100g, then why do the various nutrients that they list not add up to 100g. The answer to this is quite simple: it doesn’t add up to 100g because laws that govern labeling requirements only require manufacturers to list certain key nutritional information, such as fat, protein, sodium, and carbohydrate content.
In the example you show above, in each 100g serving you will find (on average):
74g of carbohydrates (of which, 4g is fiber, and 39g is total sugars)
8h of protein.
This leaves 18g of “mystery content”. Things that constitute “mystery content” in any food product may include (but are not limited to) nutrients that don’t qualify under labeling laws as a key nutrients, or fillers/preservatives/colors/flavorings/etc.
Hope this answers your question!
“ 74g of carbohydrates (of which, 4g is fiber, and 39g is total sugars)”
With respect to carbs, what makes up the rest of the 74-43 (31g)?
The rest would be complex carbohydrates or starches. Sugars are considered simple carbohydrates.
Benny
Benny beat me to it. But yeah, Polysaccharides. Mostly starches. But small amounts of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) too, like arabinoxylans (hemicellulose).
EDIT: Actually, I guess the NSP would be fibre. If we can't digest it - it's fibre.
When added together, the combined grams of fat, grams of protein, and grams of carbohydrates in a given serving of food will rarely total the number of grams of food in the serving. This is because foods typically also contain water and ash (mineral) content. The exception is pure fats and oils and pure carbohydrates such as granulated sugar. A serving of 20 grams of olive oil will have 20 grams of fat. A serving of 20 grams of sugar will have 20 grams of carbohydrates.
74 + 4 + 8 = 86 + 14 moisture H2O = 100%.
Fibre is a type of carbohydrate. Which might sound odd from a nutritional point of view. But fibre simply represents complex sugars we humans are unable to metabolise. E.g. cellulose.
Strange how dextrose (=glucose) is listed as an ingredient (ie an added item), and yet nutrition info shows no added sugar.
Lance