Strange Food Label Finds

labels
cauliflower
yogurt
sugar
food

#1

I’ve been meaning to post this yogurt bit for a while, but I’ve since then found another (somewhat funny) food label find, so… figured I’d put them together and let anyone else throw in their own strangeness.

First up, yogurt (that I get for my kids). I usually get my kids Whole Milk Plain Stonyfield yogurt (for a weekend breakfast, but they don’t eat keto anyway). Recently, they did some kind of shift so that now what I only find the “Whole Milk Smooth And Creamy” (rather than it saying whole milk plain). Well, whatever, I guess that’s fine. Around the time of this shift, they also introduced some lines with “25% Less sugar than before” labels in the corner. Well, that sounds good. Oddly, they had two versions of “Whole Milk Smooth And Creamy”, one with that little bit in the corner, and one without, but otherwise everything was identical.

Here is the one that was equivalent mostly to the old “plain” label and didn’t have the 25% less:

So I checked the label to see how things were going with the reduction. Well, turns out “25% Less” means “100% more” to them:

As you can see, total carbs also more than doubled, and fat, potassium, and vitamins decreased a bit. So… I get the one that doesn’t have “25% less sugar” for them.


Should have taken a picture of this one, but was checking the label of a bag of frozen riced cauliflower earlier this week (first time I had found it, as I don’t usually get frozen vegetables), and I found it had a Total Carb count of 3, dietary fiber count of 2, and sugars count of 2. Well, something seems off about that.

I know these things are rounded, but still a bit funny. There’s an old programmer joke about 2 + 2 = 5 for very high values of 2, but I haven’t heard a 2 + 2 = 3 variation.


(Siobhan) #2

WTF @ the yogurt
That’s messed up.

Also for the cauliflower the TOTAL CARB was probably net carb.
So
Starch 1 + sugar 2 = 3

  • fiber = 5
    and they just didn’t include fiber in total. Some people do that for… some reason.

Was looking at some dog treats my sister had gotten…
The ingredients horrified me. Corn starch, corn syrup, sugar, wheat flour… etc
Candy for dogs! Gross.


#3

I thought there is a USDA standard for food labels where total carb must include fiber or something. I’ve never seen any other label where total carb = net carb anyway, even on things marketed at keto or atkins (they will advertise net carb, but their food labels will have the total carb and fiber and the advertised net carb is total carb - fiber).

If that’s not the case, that would make things particularly problematic, as we’d have a hard time ever knowing which is net and which is not net, particularly when looking at a new product in the store.


(Siobhan) #4

Hmmmm… not sure about that USDA standard, but if it were an imported product it might apply?

It could just be a rounding error like the person said.

Who knows! I could be wrong and if so thank you for correcting me!


#5

Well, at least this seems to indicate that’s the standard: https://www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/beltsville-md/beltsville-human-nutrition-research-center/nutrient-data-laboratory/docs/frequently-asked-questions-faqs/#CHO

Total carbohydrate values include total dietary fiber.

Imported would be something interesting though. This particular product doesn’t seem to be imported, but I’m only familiar with Australian food labels otherwise. That actually makes me wonder if other countries do not include fiber in their total carb count, as that would be good to know before going abroad or getting food from elsewhere (which we do around here from time to time from friends elsewhere).