I picked up 24 oz “Green Tea” from the convenience store earlier. I forgot to check how sweet it was, 60g added sugars in the 706.8ml beverage. So this is like 8.5% sugar (g/ml). Obviously that’s napkin math but this is showerthoughts, not theydidthemath
Measuring added sugar by volume makes little sense. You can add sugar to water and the liquid volume hardly changes. And volume of the sugar depends on crystal size. It works a bit better for alcohol, as that is mixing of two liquids.
Measuring mass makes much more sense and in EU all nutrition labels show sugar per 100g of product (sometimes additionally ‘in one serving’, but that is quite arbitrary). And that is perfectly enough to compare products. I routinely check labels of picles - many of those have insane amounts of sugar, for no good reasons.
It works a bit better for alcohol, as that is mixing of two liquids.
Just to stress the “bit better”, 50 mL of alcohol added to 50 mL of water results in 96 mL of liquid. Even ABV’s defined differently in different places and is a bit hinky.
Yes, but at least 50mL of 95% alcohol is always the same amount of alcohol. And you won’t be able to get over 100% alcohol content by volume, as you can get with sugar in water.
50mL of 95% alcohol is always the same amount of alcohol.
It’s not, though. Some places use ABV, some use ABW.
I should’ve been explicit about solubility etc. being obstacles here instead of just writing ‘napkin math’. I think the general idea is still a good one, I just don’t have the math (physics?) chops to say exactly what method of measurement/comparison would be needed
It won’t happen because the sugar industry lobbies very actively against this sort of labeling. They specifically don’t want you to be able to do those sorts of calculations when buying products, which is why they use a completely arbitrary measurement system for the nutrition label in the first place; most people can’t visualize what 60g of sugar even looks like without a scale, but they can definitely visualize ~8% of a can’s volume.
It’s a good idea tho
I mean there’s the x g of sugar/100 g of product which is exactly the same as a weight percentage so if people aren’t braindead it’s easy
That’s a regional thing I think. I’ve never seen it in the US. But it seems like they are hell bent on obfuscating information wherever possible.
I think it’s standard in the EU
Forgot I posted this, apparently I did not have my account set up to notify me to replies in my threads. Learning curve!
It’s exactly like this where I live. Not only sugars, but also fats -specifying which of those are saturated- and many other components. I think it’s actually an EU regulation.
