Nutrition Database: Measure Vitamins More Precisely?

Hi,

when adding a new food to the nutrition database, I always wonder what kind of percentage the vitamin-% are supposed to be. Is it RDA or something different?

Whatever the answer to that question is, I think it would be better if one could just enter the precise amount of vitamins in the most precise measure available on the product (which is mg/µg on almost all products I know – given that they give any information about vitamins at all). Those values could easily be used to calculate the displayed percentage, just like it is done with the other nutritional values. This would also help those who want to keep track of their vitamin intake, I guess.

Any input? Did I possibly miss anything? ^^

In the US, we’re not given the actual level of vitamins/minerals, only the percentage of the recommended daily allowance. So it would be difficult to fill out a nutritional chart using our labels if it asked for something other than % for items like Vitamin D or Calcium.

BOTH would be better I think. I use nutritiondata.com for most of my nutritional information now as it provides quite detailed nutritional breakdowns. However, on products not in their database, then agreed with lizanneh – those values simply are not available. But I would like to see the option of being able to enter one or the other and have the app compute out the equivalent of each.

Sorry, I did not know that this kind of information is not given to consumers in the USA. It could probably be some European law forcing companies to print informatino in this way, since I am fairly sure I have seen the same ingredients tables in several countries and languages. Anyway, I think it would be cool if both was possible – simply because the percentage given on most products I know is just rounded too much to be precise.

Seconding the desire for the option of direct measures rather than percentages. The percentages are only occasionally put on foods in Australia and New Zealand, and I’m guessing they’re probably worked out against different RDI standards than in the US.

I’ve been searching high and low for a nutritional tracker that I can use in Australia…

One of the things that always pushes me on to the next one is this tracking of nutrients by percentage…

An option in the user profile to track nutrients by percentage or weight (mcg, mg or g) would be perfect…

I’ve just recently joined the site and I know this is an older post but I’d just like to also recommend the option of being able to input either percentage or weight values into the fields.

Yes, me too. The recommended values vary by age, gender, and so on (see the Dietary Reference Intake numbers, for example), so a single percentage is not really an accurate measure for everyone. Being able to input the actual amount of a given vitamin or mineral (for example) would be great. Also, I have found that when users try to input the percentage values themselves, they sometimes use incorrect information that is not consistent with current recommendations from various professional bodies (Vitamin D would be a good example). So, another vote for numbers as well as percentages.