Food labels – do we need calories and kilojoules?

If the quest to use SI units were serious then we’d be buying electricity in kJ instead of kWh. The key thing here is meaningfulness. Calories, despite their quirky definition, are understood in popular culture. There’s no instance of Joules being understood in popular culture. Why throw away one of the few measurement units that people seem to be able to understand?

New York State Claim using Calories is starting to change American Attitudes to-wards eating; even the Big Burger firms are supporting the introduction of how many Calories in their menu; which is a surprise there is talk that it is to go Countrywide. kilojoules will be rejected by the British Public if this happens most Ethnic British whites regard America as Britain’s Allie much more than the E.U.

The joule (kilojoule) and the calorie (kilocalorie) are now starting to appear on supermarket and shop shelves.

The following link connects to an article by UKMA.

http://metricviews.org.uk/2013/05/joules-rare-but-minor-progress-for-metrication/#more-4270

When i read a food product information 1st i look for salt content then fat.I was horrified in Ready meals the salt content is so high i dropped the Ready meal like a hot piece of metal.I cannot understand why a can of baked beans with lower sugar&salt costs more than an ordinary can of beans surely they should be less or the same?.

As a subscriber to “Which?” magazine, I am disappointed to learn from that article at the UKMA’s site, that the Consumers’ Association apparently lobbied the goverment to try and keep the confusing status quo mess involving kCal.

And at the expense of kJ too. What were you thinking, you guys??

It seems fairly obvious to me reading here that no-one has an issue with kJ being involved, the question seems to me mostly whether you want “just kJ” or “kJ plus kCal”.

So what the hell were the CA doing lobbying for just kCal (and getting *all* the abbreviations for just about all the units wrong too!).

Nutrition labels – who checks the quality of information provided?

Compare two bottles of distilled malt vinegar:
Same product – one with an energy value 3 times the energy value of the other.
ASDA (bar code: 2100 6296) 586 ml bottle
Energy 26 kJ per 100 ml
AND
SAINSBURY’S (bar code: 0189 3212) 586 ml bottle
Energy 77 kJ per 100 ml
It says the ASDA is produced in Spain. For the Sainsbury’s one it’s produced in the UK.

Are Local Authority Trading Standards Officers responsible for checking the accuracy of the values stated on the nutrition labels?

Is it possible for one type of distilled malt vinegar to have an energy value about three times greater than another sample?

The values for Fat, Carbohydrate, Fibre, Protein, etc. are very similar.
These values (in grams) are shown below:
Fat 0 [ASDA] < 0.5 [SAINSBURY’S]
Carbohydrates 1.0 [ASDA] < 0.5 [SAINSBURY’S]
Fibre 0 [ASDA] < 0.5 [SAINSBURY’S]
Protein < 0.5 [ASDA] < 0.5 [SAINSBURY’S]
Salt 0 [ASDA] < 0.01 [SAINSBURY’S]

For the Sainsbury’s product it also provides the values per tablespoon (15 ml), these are given below:
Energy 12 kJ, then in the same order Fat, Carbohydrate, etc
< 0.5; < 0.5; < 0.5; < 0.5; < 0.5;

It seems the food industry uses kcals and cals interchangeably. Rather strange. I’ve wondered about that for a long time.