{"id":16900,"date":"2021-02-10T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=16900"},"modified":"2021-02-04T09:33:02","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T14:33:02","slug":"puzzling-nutrition-information-on-food-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2021\/02\/10\/puzzling-nutrition-information-on-food-labels\/","title":{"rendered":"Puzzling Nutrition Information on Food Labels \u2013 Cholesterol in Vegan Foods?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vegetarian Resource Group was recently contacted and asked this question, \u201cHere’s a weird one: a product labeled as vegan, with no obvious non-vegan ingredients (that I see), but 15 mg cholesterol. Is the vegan label wrong? Am I misreading one of the ingredients? \u2026 What’s this all about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A product that is truly vegan should not contain on the label any cholesterol, a substance produced by animals. Grains, legumes, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and vegetable oils do not have cholesterol or only contain insignificant amounts (more on this in a future blog posting). In order to address this puzzle, we need to consider where the nutrient amounts on nutrition labels come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     According to the\nFDA, the government agency responsible for food labeling, food manufacturers\nshould have a laboratory analyze the nutritional content of the company\u2019s\nproduct using specific tests. If the manufacturer of the product did this and\ndetermined that the product contained cholesterol, it could be due to\ncontamination during production or it could be that the product contains small\namounts of an animal ingredient that contains cholesterol and that the products\nshould not be labeled as vegan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In place of\ncostly laboratory analysis, manufacturers may choose to use existing\nnutritional data bases and programs to calculate the nutritional content of\ntheir food product. If a company use a nutritional data base to calculate the\nnutritional content, they input all the ingredients and amounts, and a program\ncalculates the amounts of different nutrients in a serving of food. The\nmanufacturer is responsible for the accuracy of the information on the\nnutrition label on their products so FDA states that calculated nutrient\ncontent should be validated by laboratory analyses (1). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     FDA discourages\ncompanies from merely copying a competitor\u2019s label with the assumption that the\nproducts are similar. If FDA checked and found that a product\u2019s composition did\nnot agree with its nutritional label, the firm could not claim that it acted in\ngood faith and should not be penalized if it copied information from a\ncompetitor (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Misleading\ninformation can be generated when nutrient databases are used. Most programs\nprovide users with a choice of ingredients when recipes are being inputted. An\nexample of the kind of error that could be introduced \u2013 if an ingredient in a\nvegan product is pasta, and the person inputting the recipe into the program\nchooses a pasta that contains eggs instead of a vegan pasta as the ingredient,\nthe recipe analysis would indicate that there is cholesterol in the product. If\nthe company neglected to verify this information with laboratory analysis,\nincorrect label information could result. So, one possibility for there\napparently being cholesterol in a product labeled as vegan is incorrect input\nof ingredients into a nutritional analysis program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The FDA does\ncompliance checks in which they analyze food samples that have been randomly\ncollected from lots of a food \u2013 a lot could be one day\u2019s production. FDA takes\n12 subsamples, combines them into one sample and analyzes the nutrient content\nof this composite. To be in compliance with FDA\u2019s labeling regulations for\ncholesterol, the amount of cholesterol determined to be in the sample by lab\nanalysis should be no more than 20% higher than what the label indicates is in\nthe product. Having an analyzed amount of cholesterol below what is stated on\nthe label, is \u201cusually considered acceptable by the agency within good\nmanufacturing practices (2).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Contacting the\ncompany may be helpful in determining the cause of the apparently incorrect\nlabel information and may alert the company to the need to correct either the\n\u201cvegan\u201d label or the amount of cholesterol shown on the label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. FDA. A Food Labeling Guide. Guidance for Industry.\nJanuary, 2013. https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/files\/food\/published\/Food-Labeling-Guide-%28PDF%29.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. FDA. Guidance for Industry: Guide for Developing and Using Data Bases for Nutrition Labeling. 1998. https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/regulatory-information\/search-fda-guidance-documents\/guidance-industry-guide-developing-and-using-data-bases-nutrition-labeling#Chapter_1<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more food labeling information see: https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/ingredients\/index.php<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contents of this posting, website, and our other publications, including Vegetarian Journal, are not intended to provide personal medical advice. Medical advice should be obtained from a qualified health professional. We often depend on product and ingredient information from company statements. It is impossible to be 100% sure about a statement, info can change, people have different views, and mistakes can be made. Please use your best judgment about whether a product is suitable for you. To be sure, do further research or confirmation on your own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD The Vegetarian Resource Group was recently contacted and asked this question, \u201cHere’s a weird one: a product labeled as vegan, with no obvious non-vegan ingredients (that I see), but 15 mg cholesterol. Is the vegan label wrong? Am I misreading one of the ingredients? \u2026 What’s this all about?\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16927,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16900\/revisions\/16927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}