Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Robert FalconerTaylor — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 15:51:26 GMT

[quote user="Bob Russell"]

Different manufacturers

[/quote]

Precisely, Alex German at Liverpool published some very nice data on this 2014 as I remember.

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Bob Russell — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 13:42:50 GMT

How useful are these comparisons?

Different manufacturers use different methods to get the numbers (as long as they meet the statutory requirements). There are also great differences between the availability/digestibility of the ingredients.

Are you in danger of comparing apples and pears?

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Beats — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 19:37:54 GMT

[quote user="Robert FalconerTaylor"]

[quote user="Beats"]

..get the carb content on a website such as...

[/quote]

You don't need it, work it out from the mandatory listed analysis. Carbs is optional, but easy enough to derive - it's what's missing when you add up all the %%.

[/quote]

I think I misunderstood the point of the original post.

I thought that the problem was that in the absence of moisture couldn't subtract to get carbs.

I'm now thinking that the listing is in dry matter, so can figure carbs fine, but without the moisture content can't translate this into kcal per gram of food actually being eaten?

Do I understand problem in original post better now?

If so, then I checked a couple of foods on website already linked and it did list the energy in kcal/100g

Is this of help or not?

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Evelyn Barbour-Hill — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 18:49:27 GMT

[quote user="Liz w"] they don’t just have the calorie content and carb content as fed.[/quote]

Because per gram in the dry matter is the only way to compare foods easily?

Anecdote. A good few years ago I had to deal with a cat lady (she was forever kidnapping other people's cats because she thought they were"strays" – but that's by the way). She would never euthanase anything so she had all these ancient cats in various degrees of kidney failure. Being a believer in renal diets in those days, I managed to get them on to Hill's k/d. After a couple of months, she phoned up and said she wouldn't be coming to me again, I was dishonest, she had discovered that Kitekat, much cheaper, had a much lower protein content than Hill's expensive k/d.

I wasn't sorry to lose her, but I was a little puzzled, so I had a look at a tin of Kitekat and all became clear: the protein content was quoted as a percentage of the food in the tin. The silly lady had not understood that the tin was 80% water.

While you've got me on labels.... do you remember some silly people stirring up against the evils of manufactured pet food... "They even put ash in it! Look, it's right there on the label!"

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Liz w — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 17:05:40 GMT

It does seem very strange that they don’t just have the calorie content and carb content as fed. ( Although sadly I am getting quite a lot of satisfaction from working out my calculations.

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Robert FalconerTaylor — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 14:36:16 GMT

[quote user="Beats"]

..get the carb content on a website such as...

[/quote]

You don't need it, work it out from the mandatory listed analysis. Carbs is optional, but easy enough to derive - it's what's missing when you add up all the %%.

The main margin of error anyway is the inaccuracy of the Atwater factor because it depends on overal digestibility which is a guess, but more accurate for prescrip diets where digestability is actually standardised - sort of! R

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Beats — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 11:00:41 GMT

I've not looked, but can you get the carb content on a website such as https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory or does that just give you what's on the label?

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Liz w — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 10:02:30 GMT

Thank you. I’m about to try out different moisture % in my calculations to see how much of a difference it actually makes to the final figures if you’re a few %out.

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Robert FalconerTaylor — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 05:42:07 GMT

We quote in our courses DRY = 6 -12%, SEMI-MOIST = 15 - 30%, DRY = 70 - 80%

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Evelyn Barbour-Hill — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 13:54:05 GMT

Wouldn't it be close enough to assume that dry food is nearly 0% water and tinned food is about 80% water?

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Liz w — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 10:05:00 GMT

We just thought it would be handy to do it quickly in the diet consult without resorting to phoning up for more info. I wasn’t sure if I was missing something - it seems to make all the nutritional information pointless.

RE: Anyone into nutrition? Question about food labels and moisture content

Sammy82 — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 09:22:37 GMT

If the ingredients/nutritional values are listed per dry matter then you can't. But it should be possible to contact the manufacturer and get more detailed nutritional information incl calories?