4 ms·

In Poland it's regulated, you can be off by 15%. My mate did tests in a lab. All products he picked showed 15% lower kcal value on the packaging. I pick reduce

by lukasm 10y ago

In Poland it's regulated, you can be off by 15%. My mate did tests in a lab. All products he picked showed 15% lower kcal value on the packaging. I pick reduced fat houmous from the fridge. The label says 100g has 256kcal (18g of fat, 13g of carbs, 8,5g of protein = 248kcal)

alexbock 10y ago
You would have to be very confident in the accuracy of your measurements to throw away your margin of error like that. If you report values 13% lower to try to appeal to consumers and your lab numbers are off by 3%, now you're wrong by over 15% and you're going to have a problem (if anyone even notices, or cares). Are there any Polish media reports about this practice? It sounds like the kind of thing the American media would love to report about if it was happening here. (Anything that fits the basic format of "Are companies misreporting arsenic levels in your child's grape juice? Story at eleven!" is going to make a journalist here salivate.)
- chris_va 10y ago
  Kind of reminds me of this story: http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donbyrd/Teach/Math//Gamow_BreadRationingStory.pdf http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donbyrd/Teach/Math//Gamow...
  - alexbock 10y ago
    Would it be possible for the baker to distribute bread to customers in such a way that the weight appears to follow a fair curve for any one customer, but is still unfair if all loaves for all customers were analyzed in aggregate? (something like Simpson's paradox?) After the professor first discovered him he obviously could have started giving him loaves calculated to follow the fair distribution, but I'm not sure if it's possible to scale that technique.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      If he is able to control the loaf the professor gets he could buy 1 correct form.
    - chris_va 10y ago
      Each customer would need to see a normal distribution (possible), and each would need the mean to match the "correct" value (not possible without the overall mean matching the correct value).
    - sukilot 10y ago
      A bread loaf is discrete . Use the same fractional unit rounding technique from Superman II / Office Space.
  - sukilot 10y ago
    There's a book with an apocryphal story about how a coin maker was a accused of cheating because his gold coins had excessive standard error, before the discovery of standard deviation.
- baddox 10y ago
  Well who does the measurement to determine the percent error? Presumably it would be the government or some lab at the request of the government, so food manufacturers could just use that same lab.
thesimon 10y ago
And apparently in the US you can be off by whatever you want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo The video also deals with calorie count in restaurants. The NYC regulation to require calorie counts directly on the menu really seems like a good idea. Other than the people already knowing the rough calorie count, who checks the obscure and difficult tables on the website?
- cperciva 10y ago
  who checks the obscure and difficult tables I'm not sure exactly which tables you're referring to here, but if you mean tables showing nutritional details beyond the mere number of calories: Being able to look up how many grams of carbohydrate they're consuming is a incredibly important for type 1 diabetics.
  - thesimon 10y ago
    >I'm not sure exactly which tables you're referring to here, These http://www.bk.com/pdfs/nutrition.pdf http://www.bk.com/pdfs/nutrition.pdf nutrition information tables. The Burger King one actually looks quite reasonable. Compare this to the German Starbucks one: http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/4145371584DF4F75A9E0ADEAF5A388E3.pdf http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/4145371584DF4F75A9E... I doubt a lot of people would reconsider their choice to order a frappuccino if they knew it contains as much calories as a Big Mac. It's good that it's so detailed, but a tl;dr version on the board would be good. It's not like the average joe opens this on their phone to compare how many calories each product has. >Being able to look up how many grams of carbohydrate they're consuming is a incredibly important for type 1 diabetics. Valid point
- awqrre 10y ago
  The government doesn't even have the resources to check fish species that are sold in grocery stores and restaurants [1]... food labeling is a big problem in the US. 1. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/21/172589997/one-in-three-fish-sold-at-restaurants-and-grocery-stores-is-mislabeled http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/21/172589997/one...
jimmaswell 10y ago
Low fat diets are actually considered unhealthy by nutritionists now, apparently.

by lukasm 10y ago

alexbock 10y ago

You would have to be very confident in the accuracy of your measurements to throw away your margin of error like that. If you report values 13% lower to try to appeal to consumers and your lab numbers are off by 3%, now you're wrong by over 15% and you're going to have a problem (if anyone even notices, or cares). Are there any Polish media reports about this practice? It sounds like the kind of thing the American media would love to report about if it was happening here. (Anything that fits the basic format of "Are companies misreporting arsenic levels in your child's grape juice? Story at eleven!" is going to make a journalist here salivate.)

chris_va 10y ago
Kind of reminds me of this story: http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donbyrd/Teach/Math//Gamow_BreadRationingStory.pdf http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donbyrd/Teach/Math//Gamow...
- alexbock 10y ago
  Would it be possible for the baker to distribute bread to customers in such a way that the weight appears to follow a fair curve for any one customer, but is still unfair if all loaves for all customers were analyzed in aggregate? (something like Simpson's paradox?) After the professor first discovered him he obviously could have started giving him loaves calculated to follow the fair distribution, but I'm not sure if it's possible to scale that technique.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    If he is able to control the loaf the professor gets he could buy 1 correct form.
  - chris_va 10y ago
    Each customer would need to see a normal distribution (possible), and each would need the mean to match the "correct" value (not possible without the overall mean matching the correct value).
  - sukilot 10y ago
    A bread loaf is discrete . Use the same fractional unit rounding technique from Superman II / Office Space.
- sukilot 10y ago
  There's a book with an apocryphal story about how a coin maker was a accused of cheating because his gold coins had excessive standard error, before the discovery of standard deviation.
baddox 10y ago
Well who does the measurement to determine the percent error? Presumably it would be the government or some lab at the request of the government, so food manufacturers could just use that same lab.

thesimon 10y ago

And apparently in the US you can be off by whatever you want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo The video also deals with calorie count in restaurants. The NYC regulation to require calorie counts directly on the menu really seems like a good idea. Other than the people already knowing the rough calorie count, who checks the obscure and difficult tables on the website?

cperciva 10y ago
who checks the obscure and difficult tables I'm not sure exactly which tables you're referring to here, but if you mean tables showing nutritional details beyond the mere number of calories: Being able to look up how many grams of carbohydrate they're consuming is a incredibly important for type 1 diabetics.
- thesimon 10y ago
  >I'm not sure exactly which tables you're referring to here, These http://www.bk.com/pdfs/nutrition.pdf http://www.bk.com/pdfs/nutrition.pdf nutrition information tables. The Burger King one actually looks quite reasonable. Compare this to the German Starbucks one: http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/4145371584DF4F75A9E0ADEAF5A388E3.pdf http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/4145371584DF4F75A9E... I doubt a lot of people would reconsider their choice to order a frappuccino if they knew it contains as much calories as a Big Mac. It's good that it's so detailed, but a tl;dr version on the board would be good. It's not like the average joe opens this on their phone to compare how many calories each product has. >Being able to look up how many grams of carbohydrate they're consuming is a incredibly important for type 1 diabetics. Valid point
awqrre 10y ago
The government doesn't even have the resources to check fish species that are sold in grocery stores and restaurants [1]... food labeling is a big problem in the US. 1. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/21/172589997/one-in-three-fish-sold-at-restaurants-and-grocery-stores-is-mislabeled http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/21/172589997/one...

jimmaswell 10y ago

Low fat diets are actually considered unhealthy by nutritionists now, apparently.