Show mg not % calcium, iron, vit A C

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Ujustsdj
Ujustsdj Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Since not all of us have 2000 calorie diets it seems it would be much better to display calcium iron vitamin A and c with nutritional information as milligrams rather than a percentage.

Is there a way to make the suggestion to the programmers?

Replies

  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited May 2021
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    Problem is the nutrition labels until recently was only in %, and actually I still see many that are still in % only, while others give both mg & %.
    Of course that causes many goofballs to enter the label info wrong.

    And that's why you'll never see such a change made. Current database and labeling requirements.

    But you can backtrack from your own desired mg levels to what that % for 2000 cal diet would end up being.
    Only have to do it once to know your desired level and then you got something to track to.

  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,984 Member
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    Your vitamin needs do not change based on how many calories a day you consume. The percentage for vitamins and minerals on U.S. food labels refers to the percentage of the recommended daily amount for demographic group with the highest recommendation, barring pregnant and lactating women. E.g., premenopausal women are recommended to get 18 mg (at least I think it's mg -- anyway, 18 of whatever units they use for iron RDA), so if you eat a combination of foods that give you 100% of iron, you've gotten 18 mg. But if you're a man or a post-menopausal woman, the recommended daily amount is only 8 mg, or roughly 45% of the amount that 100% correlates to, so you could go into your goals and change your iron goal to 45% if you're a man or post-menopausal woman.

    But it really doesn't have anything to do with how many calories you're consuming.

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