Tuesday, September 14, 2010

I really need to just stop looking at this stuff

I'm eating lunch and congratulating myself on choosing a healthier alternative this time.

UW food services has a nutritional information database on much of what it serves on campus. I had the California Chicken Pita.

http://www.foodservices.uwaterloo.ca/nutrition/itemsearch.php?id=1989

It looks good, if you're only reading the percentage column. When you actually look at the milligrams, and do the math, and are aware of the Government of Canada guidelines on sodium consumption....

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2006004/article/sodium/4148995-eng.htm

One really has to wonder in what weird Universe the University of Waterloo is calculating 640mg to be 23% of 1500 mg.  I wrote them of course. UW is famous for it's math faculty and all.

6 comments:

vandy said...

Well, that statcan article does list an 'upper limit' of sodium consumption of 2300mg. And the 27% that UWaterloo calculates as 640mg is closer to what 27% of 2300mg should be: 621.
But the key thing might not be UW's math, so much as what guideline they're following.
v

vandy said...

Even weirder...when Googling for further info on salt consumption, I found some Canada Food Guide stuff, showing how to read those labels, and the sample had 860mg listed as 36% daily value of sodium. Huh? That's assuming an allowable intake of 2390 mg per day! Something is definitely confusing here.
v

Karen said...

I know!!

Gypsy said...

The solution (I know this won't help): pack your own lunch. Then you'll know exactly what's in it.

Karen said...

If I make a sandwich at home, I'd have to do the math and add it up myself.

Two slices of bread at X mg, and a little bit of butte at X mg, and the filling at X mg.

It still adds up.

I'm beginning to think that we're all just screwed for sodium, given how everything is made and I'm better off not obsessing about it and increasing the exercise instead.

Unfortunately, the exercise thing is my hardest hurdle.

Thoka is helping.

Gypsy said...

Yes but you can control things like sodium more at home. You can use unsalted butter for instance, or non at all. You can have a cheese and cucumber or cheese and tomato sandwich, with good cheese (that I'm making a guess has less sodium than processed cheese). etc. If there's a microwave for the staff, you can reheat yesterday's leftovers, which assumably, you cooked with less salt.