I always wonder how “they” can know the exact amount of fiber, protein, carbs and sugars, etc when I’m reading ingredient labels.
PS: couldn’t decide between biology or chemistry flair since I guess my question relates to biochemistry! Haha
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Ingredient manufacturers are responsible for creating documents that break down the nutrition content of their products. This is done in a lab or with info from their own suppliers or by estimation guidelines.
Say you develop beverages that will be a final product for consumers. You have a lab formula that breaks down the weight quantity of your ingredients. A regulatory person uses software that has the aforementioned nutrition breakdowns already inputted into it. So the software can calculate the caloric and nutrition content based off of weight and divides it by the weight/volume of the given serving size. There’s a shorthand for calories as well as for carbs, etc.
Edit: there are lots of ingredients with no nutritional value. Often flavors have very little and while they don’t reflect in the nutrition label they are required to be disclosed in the ingredient statement, which is supposed to be listed by descending weight.
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