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Percent Fat and Protein

Gather three of your favorite packaged foods, perhaps one from each: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Use the model used by the food industry, example and analyze, through the mathematical formula explained, the fat content and protein content from your foods.
The written paper should be one page in length and concise in your reasoning. Plan your paper by organizing the data, formulas and then computations. You may attach the calculations as a scanned in hand written document, but make sure it is readable.

(Model used by food industry)

Suppose a 10-ounce serving of a food containing 240 calories, and the label states that it contains 9 grams of fat. The food industry then converts 10 ounces to grams by multiplying each ounce by 29 grams; hence, the total weight of the product is 290 grams, and if there are 9 grams of fat, the percentage of fat is

_____ x 100%= 3.1%

The procedure by the food industry is misleading. The correct way to calculate the fat content is to multiply the number of grams of fat by 9 to get the calories. (Each gram of fat is converted to 9 calories.) In this case, 9 x 9 =81 calories. Next, divide the fat calories by the total calories and multiply by 100% to get the percentage of calories derived from fat. In this case, the label stated that a 10 ounce serving contained a total of 240 calories.

____ x 100%= 33.75%

Hence, 33.75% calories come from fat, not 3% as suggested.

(My three foods)

1) Pillsbury Toaster Strudel, Strawberry
Serving size- 1 pastry (54g)
Calories for single serving-190
Fat content- 8 grams
Protein- 3 grams

2) Raisin Bran Crunch
Serving size- 1 Cup (53g)
Calories for a single serving-190
Fat Content- 1 gram
Protein- 3 grams

3) Activia Yogurt, Vanilla
Serving Size- 1 Container (4 oz)
Calories for a single serving-110
Fat Content-2 grams
Protein-5 grams

Solution Summary

This solution explains how to calculate the % calories from fat and the % calories from protein in several types of food based off of the nutritional labels on the food.