Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Recommended daily intake

Ever calculated the recommended daily intake percentage of butter and/or sugar per slice of a cake you've just baked? It's surprisingly easy to do (says someone who thinks Latin literally makes more sense than numbers). And I promise it'll scare the shit out of you. You'll spend the next twenty-four hours trying to rationalise the intake: "I don't bake cakes every week," "I don't eat cake for breakfast, lunch and tea," "It's only a guide?" "It doesn't matter if my tummy wobbles, I am a confident, self-empowered woman- oh crap."

Yes sirree. The first time I noticed the percentage of recommended daily intake (or %DI for the label savvy) was on a packet of scotch-finger biscuits about four months ago… I've eaten less than a handful of scotch-fingers since then, the saturated fat being a whopping 19%DI… that's per biscuit! Ouch.

Normally I wouldn't be the sort of girl to look at labels, but that one pulled me up, and unfortunately I've been looking ever since. Then for labels that only give grams per serving, I managed to work out how to calculate their percentage… Then, horror increasing my the moment, I calculated, per slice, a cake I had just made. A light chocolate cake. 75 grams of butter ÷ 8 = 9.3-ish grams per slice ÷ 24 (total %DI) = 39%. Dear god. A cake with 125g of butter… pretty basic, doesn't include icing… do the math… 65% DI saturated fat per slice.

See that body on the floor… that's me out cold.