How do food producers measure the exact amount of carbs, proteins, vitamins etc. in a piece of food?
In: Biology
Food producers don’t usually measure exact amounts, but rather go by references for foods or ingredients provided by suppliers or labs. I think the lab part is pretty interesting, and here is what I know about that:
If you burn the food and measure the energy it puts out, you know the calorie content.
Labs measure fat of a food by first extracting the fat with a solvent and measuring it. We know that fats contain about 9 calories per gram.
Protein can measured by how much nitrogen is in a food. The amount of nitrogen found in protein is generally similar enough among all proteins to make this estimation. We know that protein contains about 4 calories per gram.
Since a food’s total caloric intake is fat calories + protein calories + carb calories, we can take the total energy it puts out by burning, subtract extracted fat * 9, and subtract protein estimated * 4 to get the calories provided as carbohydrates.
If you incinerate the food to ash, you can measure minerals like iron and zinc much easier. To be honest, I don’t know much more than that when it comes to micro nutrient measurements.
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