Mom asks: "Dear Ben The Food Scientist, I am very curious about the nutrition panel. Can you tell me more about how to read the nutrition panel, for example of a serving of peanuts? Especially on the fats."
Very good question, mom. The truth is, it is very important for every consumer to understand how the nutrition label works, and how to interpret apparent and not-so-apparent bits of information.
Let's take this label for example. It seems that one serving of peanuts (30g) contains 18 g of fat, 2.9 g of it is saturated fat, and 0 g of trans fat. Pretty straight-forward till now. Where is the other 15.1 g?
Some of you may be concerned about the 15.1 g of fat? Why is the manufacturer not showing it on the label? The truth is, it is optional for the industry to either showing it or not showing it. For this case, it is common sense to assume that the rest 15.1 g of fats are either mono- (MUFA) or poly-unsaturated fats (PUFA).
Mom raised the concern of the possibilities of the 15.1 g being "artificial", just due to the fact that the manufacturer exclude it from the nutrition panel. To precisely find out the fact, you will have to connect dots with the ingredients list as well. In case of peanuts, it is rest assured that the 15.1g is the unsaturated fat, not anything artificial.
So that is all for this time about the fat portion of the nutrition panel. Want to know more about the nutrition panel or about other kinds of fat-like substances? Send me a question for my next blog post.
