Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 156 posts

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#111

Post by thinkloop »

lsc wrote: post #99
thinkloop wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check this out: http://www.alive.com/health/fit-for-human-consumption/ Animals that are sick or unhealthy are separated from the herd and slaughtered independently, then sold for pet food and livestock feed. This was partly what fostered the mad cow issue. There is higher risk for illness with non-human grade food. If you don't want higher risk for your pet than child, you shouldn't feed the off-the-shelf non-human g…

> if you care about your pet like you do your child, you shouldn't feed the off-the-shelf non-human grade food. This is... an interesting generational thing, I think. To most older people, the idea of caring as much for your pet as you would for a child seems viscerally wrong. They even economize on pet healthcare. but... among those younger than me, your view, as far as I can tell, seems to be the norm. The very ide…

Great point, I have definitely noticed this in my own family. The elders are not only against "wasting" money above the minimum required for sustenance, but they get openly and visibly angry about it when someone else does. For some reason, this particular issue crosses over from "well I wouldn't do it, but to each his own", to seeing it as a fundamentally immoral act. It surprised me in the beginning.

Personally I can't understand the logic. Who cares what species something is, it's just a question of level of consciousness. A dog is pretty much a 2 yr old child. Why have no concern for such a consciousness, whether it's an animal, android, human, or whatever.

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#112

Post by eru »

germanier wrote: post #103
Scarblac wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This scandal is the reason Dutch supermarkets still limit the amount of baby formula that can be bought per customer, so many Chinese trying to buy up large amounts that there was a risk many stores would run out.

Hong Kong even restricts export of baby formula (and smugglers are regularly arrested on the border to mainland).

I always wonder why they don't just order more from the factory and sell to the Chinese? (Or raise prices.)

Why don't they want to make more money?

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#113

Post by eru »

Someone wrote: post #17
cma wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The protein test was famously faked with melamine in the Chinese dog-food scandal that killed dogs and resulted in a recall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls

The linked-to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal was way more scandalous. When bought in bulk, milk isn’t priced by the liter because it is too easy to water it down. Instead, it is priced by kilograms of protein. Measuring protein is hard, so they measure nitrogen instead ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjeldahl_method#Conversion_fac... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumas_method#Advantages_and…

Stupidly enough, that scandal was partially to blame on the government price caps on milk.

Farmers' inputs were getting more expensive but they were prevented from raising prices. So some farmers were more likely to resort to such poisonous fraud.

Of course, the foreign milk products they import these days are even more expensive.

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#114

Post by eru »

z3t4 wrote: post #77
lostlogin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same cheat was used in milk in China in '08. Baby formula was effected and babies died. Many companies were doing it and something like 50,000 babies were hospitalised. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Considering how cheap protein is, you must be the greediest person ever to fake baby formula.

The Chinese government capped prices of milk products in a bid to tame inflation.

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#115

Post by eru »

analog31 wrote: post #10
alexbock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pizza in particular is an interesting example because I would expect leavened bread products to be one of the cases where summing the components would cause more problems than usual (because you're going to lose sugar and other nutrients to the yeast). I'm not sure how many calories worth of carbs yeast consume during normal bread making, but I would expect it to be measurable. When making wine, yeast can easily cons…

I suspect it's not a large effect for bread. My family bakes our own bread, and I would say without having measured it on a scale, that there's not a noticeable loss of weight from one end of the process to the other. Also, you'd notice the stuff bubbling if there were a significant production of CO2. I've also made beer, and it bubbles like crazy once it gets working. One possible difference is that bread is made fr…

CO2 is but one of the products of the metabolism via oxygen. Water is another one.

The CO2 escapes, taking C out of the bread. The water (mostly) stays, adding extra O2 into the bread. I don't know which process has the bigger impact on weight of the dough, though. Especially as the dough also dries out over time.

Probably not very much impact, as you say.

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#116

Post by eru »

Symbiote wrote: post #80
analog31 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, all I can offer is... tonight is baking night. I will weigh the ingredients, equipment, the risen dough, and the final product.

You could also seal the dough in a large bag, and measure the volume of gas produced.

Won't the yeast get less oxygen that way?

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#117

Post by jacalata »

eru wrote: post #112
germanier wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong even restricts export of baby formula (and smugglers are regularly arrested on the border to mainland).

I always wonder why they don't just order more from the factory and sell to the Chinese? (Or raise prices.) Why don't they want to make more money?

I don't know if the factories are manufacturing enough, or capable of ramping up to do so. It's a huge increase in demand. I heard of similar problems in Australia.

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#118

Post by eru »

mikekchar wrote: post #110
jasonjei wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. 500 calories from chicken or a lean protein like crab is very different from 500 calories from a pastry. What should be highlighted is amount of sugar and carbohydrates, not total calories. Not every calorie is created equally. In fact, you could almost remove carbohydrates from your diet and be unaffected, but the same isn't true of protein and good fats.

It is of course different. Carbohydrates, protein and fat all undergo different metabolic pathways. Further down you are wondering why you might not have a high karma on this post. I think it's because what you have written conflates 2 issues (I suspect, though, that you aren't actually conflating them... just your writing is unclear). 500 calories from whatever source is 500 calories, when we are talking about energ…

> I'll caution you that the current attitude of "You can just cut out carbohydrates from your diet and be healthier" is unlikely to be true.

I have a lot of sympathy for your conservative and skeptical stance in general.

I am glad though, that a lot of people have done the self-experimenting (that we probably wouldn't do to normal experimental subjects) and gone on a low carb diet.

They seem fine.

There are also some better monitored people on a low carb diet, eg for some kids with epilepsy it's the only thing that works. The kids main problem is usually getting enough calories, but not any lack of other nutrients. (I think the go to source of extra calories is coconut oil, because the kids seem to mind that the least.)

See eg http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/magazine/21Epilepsy-t.html...

Edit: just checked the article above. Looks like they need to add multivitamins etc. Poor kid: his diet needs to be much more extreme than eg Atkins diet to keep the epilepsy at bay.

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#119

Post by DrScump »

projektfu wrote: post #81
mysterypie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was following that case closely back in 2007 because of my pet (thankfully not affected). An astonishing thing I learned was that practically every brand of cat food and dog food in North America is/was manufactured by a single company called Menu Foods in Streetsville, Ontario, Canada. The pet food "brands" don't have their own factories. They all contract it out to the same place. A few journalists remarked on th…

I am a veterinarian with an interest in nutrition. While it is true that the vast majority of the brands are virtual brands who have another manufacturer making their food, it is not true for the three brands you have mentioned whose owners sell most of the food sold. Purina (Nestle), Iams (Mars) and Royal Canin (Mars) manufacture their own food, as does Hill's (Colgate-Palmolive) and Pedigree (Mars). Mars, Nestle an…

One roster:

http://aplusflintriverranch.com/define-menufoods-petfoodreca...

Re: How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods? (2003)

#120

Post by DrScump »

jasonjei wrote: post #79
snewk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't understand why your comment scores so low. It's pretty clear that our bodies will absorb 500 sugar/carbohydrate calories much more quickly than 500 protein/fat calories. You will get a much greater insulin response when eating a pastry than a chicken breast.

I suspect I'm being down voted because I said I don't believe carbohydrates are required for survival. While glucose is essential for life since the brain cells die quickly without it, glucose does not have to be obtained from carbohydrates. It can be obtained from protein or fat by breaking down the protein or fat into glucose. In fact, a good percentage of protein (~50%) becomes glucose when it enters the body. Pro…

Not true at all. The brain runs just fine on ketone bodies in the absence of dietary glucose.

The few organs that do require glucose are supplied by protein conversion (gluconeogenesis).

Post reply on HN