Strawberries are low in sugar (around 8-9%) compared to other fruit, but full of pesticides. Buy organic or IPM (integrated pest management)!
Because I craft all my gelato from scratch it’s imperative that I know every single ingredient i use, and more importantly it’s nutritional values. This is how I can tell sugar, fat & solids content of all my gelato flavors.
All nutritional labels are created to be confusing, that’s because companies don’t want you to really see how much junk is in that box of cereal you eat every morning.
Here are the major issues:
First, all the labels are based on a 2000calories/day assumption and these are the calories that an active male adult would need. The majority of the population, as well as females and less active individuals, will need something closer to 1400/day, therefore all those percentages you are reading probably will not even apply to you.
Second, all the labels are based on a serving size that most of the time is so small it might as well apply to your cat (2 cookies? Who eats just that??).
Third, a lot of serving sizes are based on liquid measures (milliliter for example) while all the fat, sugar and carbs are indicated in grams (which measures the weight) - the 2 are not even comparable unless you scale that liquid amount and understand how many grams it weights!
Fourth, why do they use grams in America where the metric system is not even in use? People can’t relate to it, but luckily for me I grew up with it! Also just FYI, 1 oz equals 28 grams.
All this makes no sense and it’s just plain confusing.
The solution
A nutritional label should indicate the true nutritional values of a product; serving size really does not matter because we all eat different amounts, and we don’t all need 2000 calories to begin with!
Let’s take this label here, which is from my local, organic heavy cream i use, in a pint container. Serving size is 1/32 of the container, yep you read that right..basically a drop of it!
Serving size also is in al liquid form, while everything else is in grams (which is a weight measure). Basically you would think this heavy cream fat content is 5 grams or 8% based on the misleading label while it's actually close to 40%! Big difference right?
How did I get that number? You have to convert in grams the serving size by using a scale, and then the label tells you that 5 grams of that serving size are fat. Doing the math you get to around 40% fat content, meaning almost half of your pint container is fat… this paints a whole different picture of your heavy cream doesn’t it?
A much more streamlined and useful label would just tell you: Hey, this heavy cream you are buying contains 52% water, 40% fat and minimal amounts of vitamins, minerals, proteins and lactose (which is a sugar). Percentages are used all over the world, and everybody knows how to relate them both to a liquid and solid amount.
This will never happen, but hopefully now you know a little bit more to make the right choices for your family!
Always look at the label and ingredients amici!
Hopefully this was helpful & valuable!
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A presto amici!
Vincenzo