“Nutrition” Info on “Foods” That Have No Nutrients?

Something struck me the other day, when I was amusedly reading the printed 'nutrition' info for all the mini cakes, cookies, scones and who knows what else in the pastry case at the local Starbucks.

Why is that data called 'nutrition' information?

How can it be 'nutrition' information if there are no nutrients?

Here is one example, the Starbucks Butter Croissant:

"enriched flour (wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, butter (cream [from milk]), sugar, contains 2% or less of: yeast, eggs, salt, vital wheat gluten, dough conditioner (sodium stearoyl lactylate, mono- and diglycerides, wheat flour, soy flour, dextrose, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide [ada], l-cysteine, enzymes), natural flavor, enzymes."

In that list of eleven ingredients, a few of which have their own ingredients, too, where is the nutrition?  OK, I see mention of egg.  Backtrack a few words and you'll note that there is 2% or less in the whole product made collectively of the last seven ingredients, including the only thing in the whole panel that has any nutrition.  

Calculate that out and see that 2%, divided by seven, means that in the whole croissant 0.3% of it has nutrition in it from the egg, which was very likely NOT cage-free nor Omega 3 nor organic.

And this is only ONE example of the hundreds (actually, probably thousands) of items that people stick in their bodies without giving it a second thought.  

Some think about it, but only consider number of calories and nothing else, or perhaps grams of fat (since so many still consider all fat to be the enemy, sadly), and make their choices based purely on that number.

I do support this data being made public and I can only hope that people start to think about it more and more. 

Baby steps, perhaps- even if you're just getting the hang of reading labels as step one, at least it's the beginning of the learning process.  Then, eventually, my hope is that the information gets processed and it registers that you might actually NOT want to eat things in packages that need to have their constitution listed in the first place.

Pick up a piece of food and see what it is and eat it.  As in, an apple?  Or maybe a fish? Hmmm… imagine that!