[MikeJW]

I've been trying to watch my diet recently, and as I eat a lot of fruit, I thought I'd check that, too. Some apples have a lot more sugar than others, for instance (33% to 100% depending on where you look), so could I be making better choices there, I wondered?

So I had a look at the label on a bag of Granny Smiths - 11.8g per 100g. OK.

Red Delicious, they'll have more sugar, right? Umm, no - 11.8g per 100g.

An odd mistake? I checked out Gala, and, you guessed it - 11.8g per 100g.

What's going on? Follow any of those links and you'll see they say they're giving "typical values" for a "typical apple". What they mean by this, I assume, is it's some kind of "average apple", a general figure which is used to cover everything (I checked, and it's the same with pears - different varieties have the same nutritional values and the label talks about a "typical" pear).

But, this does seem misleading, to me. When I first read it, I took "typical" to mean "a typical apple of this type" - a typical Red Delicious, say - not some notional average apple which might not even exist.

And while I know it's not exactly the biggest of issues, if people have to closely monitor the sugar they consume then surely having an official figure perhaps 30% off reality could be a problem?

Plus it's not just sugar, I guess - this system means you can't use apple and pear (and presumably other fruit and vegetable) labels to compare the nutritional content of different varieties.

Mostly, though, it just surprised me that I didn't know the system worked this way. Obviously food won't exactly match the label, there will be a wide variation even within one variety, but I always thought it would at least relate to whatever it said on the label ("Gala").

So: is it just me? Did I miss this lesson in Supermarket School , or does it surprise you, too?

[WinterFire]

This site has nutritional breakdowns for apples. Granny Smith apples are listed as being 11.03% sugar, while Gala are 11.05%. Red Delicious 8.82%. All by weight.

http://caloriecount.about.com/calori...-apples-i69445

I'm sure there's quite a bit of random variation in terms of accuracy of calorie counts on products. And the 'typical apple' 11.8% you have is at least in the ballpark.

[MikeJW]

Thanks, WinterFire. That's definitely a lower set of figures than I've seen elsewhere. I was getting my 33% variation from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16670694 , (click the "Sugar, acid..." title for a summary), where a study in Austria and Slovenia talked about the sugar content being 11.5 to 16g (for the tested varieties), and talks about 12g as being the generally quoted figure.

Of course in the UK it might be different, I guess. I just think it would be good if you could look at the label to find out.

[Welsh-lad]

The difference is probably pretty negligible.

[degsyhufc]

100% sugar apple?

[MikeJW]

Quote:

Originally Posted by degsyhufc

100% sugar apple?

If that's referring to my first post, I meant I'd read that some apple varieties could have up to 100% more sugar than others, not 100% in total.