Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Numeracy in the bakery aisle

Today I went to the local grocery store and bought a package of hot dog buns. Always interested in the fiber content of the bread I eat, I had a look at the label to see what it had to say about the buns.

This was a package of 6 buns, so I expected to find out some information about the dietary info that one bun contains. Instead I found information about what is contained in a serving of “48g”.
Huh? 48G? What does that mean? Is that equivalent to one bun? Part of a bun?

In the name of numeracy, I decided to figure it out.

Looking at the front of the package, it lists the contents as “Wholewheat (sic) Hot Dog Buns- 6 pk 288g”.

How much was one bun? To find out, I divided 288 by 6. According to this calculation, one bun is 48g. Why couldn't they simply say that on the packaging?

One bun has 130 calories and 3grams of fiber, which is apparently 12% of the daily value of fiber one should consume per day.

I wonder how much that fibre amount actually is?

If 3g is 12%, how much is 100%.

First I found out what amount was equal to 1% daily required intake, by dividing 3g by 12. That works out to be .25g.

So if 1% of the daily reccomended intake is .25%, I can multiply that by 100 to get the 100% daily intake.
.25 x 100 = 25 g

Does that make sense? I can calculate 12% of 25g to double check.
25g x .12 = 3

I does. So I figured out that one bun is 48g. This one 48g bun provides me with 12% of my daily reccomended intake of fibre and that the total daily reccomended intake is 25g.
Then I started thinking about the mayo....

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