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Nutritional Data not adding up right

Old 09-19-2014, 08:33 AM
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Default Nutritional Data not adding up right

Bear with me, this is my first time starting a thread on the forum: I'm not sure if I'm "classic" or "verison 2" or something else.

I noticed the nutritional data on my food log is not adding up correctly.

Just one example: My vitamin E for September 16 is showing 483%. That's not really possible given what I logged in that day. Granted, I took a vitamin E supplement that day (333%), but I checked all my other foods for that day and they don't make up the difference. Similar to the vitaimin D for the same day (September 16): The bar chart shows double my actual intake.

When I look at my "overview" tab I see crazy-high values for many vitamins and minerals. I don't want to over-supplement and try very hard not to. It's bothersome not to be able to rely on the charts for my decision making, so, is this a known glitch? It's one of the reasons I've not upgraded to Premium.
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Old 09-19-2014, 08:52 AM
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If you go to your profile, the 'preferred theme' will tell you (scroll down and check what it says) if you are classic or fitday2.

If you take away the supplement (delete it from your log), what does the report for vitamin E say then? Not delete it from your custom foods, just your log for that day. You can add it back in after you see what the result is without it.
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Old 09-19-2014, 03:26 PM
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When I take the Vitamin E supplement off my list it goes down to 32%. Adding it back brings it up to 483%, which it should not, given it's only 333%.

The other vitamins and minerals on the bar chart in the overview tab are crazy-high, impossible to have achieved given I rarely take vitamins.
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Old 09-20-2014, 02:25 AM
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This is a problem far beyond my abilities to solve - but, one more question: are the foods you enter custom foods or just basic values from the database? Edit the supplement entry you made (custom food) for the vitamin e capsule, and check the serving size, etc. Just make sure it matches what the bottle says. Maybe one of the values you entered is off?

About the other vitamins: they have to be examined individually, I think.

Also, is the problem something that shows up every day, from whatever you put in your food log?

(If I drink V8 juice, my values look really high but that's because I hardly every just drink one glass of V8 juice!)

Last edited by Kathy13118; 09-20-2014 at 02:30 AM.
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Old 09-20-2014, 10:54 AM
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Kathy, thanks for trying to help - this is a problem that has gone on for quite awhile. I have a lot of custom food entries for supplements and specialty foods.

I also notice that when I choose a fraction of a food entry, such as .5 cup or 1.25 cup instead of 1 cup or 2 cups, the Fitday program seems to have a hard time calculating nutrition. It does fine calculating calories.

It's a shame, because the nutritional data is very important to me. Enough for me to consider using another service. I haven't joined the Premium service because of this.
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Old 09-20-2014, 09:40 PM
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I have a lot of custom foods but I don't put in any supplements. I wonder if anyone else is experiencing your problem?

Maybe someone else can shed some light on this?
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Old 09-28-2014, 07:44 AM
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I have a similar problem--some days my nutritional values from logged foods add up way high compared to what is shown in daily nutrition and other values will be way too low. Today I ate a food that stated 143% of Vitamin A but when I checked my daily nutritional status it indicated vitamin A consumed for today was like 38%. Sound rather odd to me--can this be fixed? I'm on the Classic version. Is this a problem on other versions?
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Old 09-29-2014, 05:52 AM
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I tried one myself - putting in Vitamin C with an orange and then adding a supplement containing Vitamin C.

It seemed pretty complicated, the way all the stuff adds up!

I myself complicated it even more by using my Gummy Bear vites which are obviously for kids! The bottle's nutrition information says that 126 mg is 210% of the RDA, which is true if the RDA is 60 mg. But the RDA is broken down into gender and age.

See the definition of RDA (it mentions gender and age):
Dietary Reference Intake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The kids' vitamin that I take has 126 mg Vitamin C, which is reported as 210% RDA - aha, I read it as 'RDA' but in fact it is 'DV.'

210% is true if the RDA is 60 mg. But that's not an RDA for a child. I am using the 'per serving' value for the gummies.

What the bottle says is '% Daily Value 4& up.'

So, here's what Daily Value is:
Daily Values (DVs)

'Recommended intakes of nutrients vary by age and gender and are known as Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) and Adequate Intakes (AIs). However, one value for each nutrient, known as the Daily Value (DV), is selected for the labels of dietary supplements and foods. A DV is often, but not always, similar to one's RDA or AI for that nutrient. DVs were developed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help consumers determine the level of various nutrients in a standard serving of food in relation to their approximate requirement for it. The label actually provides the %DV so that you can see how much (what percentage) a serving of the product contributes to reaching the DV'

Guidance for Industry: A Food Labeling Guide (14. Appendix F: Calculate the Percent Daily Value for the Appropriate Nutrients)

Sure enough, 60 mg shows up as the Vitamin C requirement for ages '4 and up.'

Using this one vitamin, C, as an example, 74.4 mg in an orange is using the nutritional information in a food database and this shows up correctly as 99% of 75.0, which is correct for my age group and gender.

But the gummy bears are reported as 126 mg and 210% DV (Daily Value). Combined, those percentages are 309%. Combined, those mgs. are 200.4 mg.

How to figure out the percentage when one is by sex and gender (Fitday knows your sex and gender, right?) and one is a huge group '4 and up'?

I think that's where the problem occurs.

My total, which is 74.4 mg (the orange) plus 126 mg (the supplement) is 200.4 mg. Fitday sees that as the total mg and then uses the 75 mg for my age and gender to figure the percentage, which is 267%. If you added the two percentages together that the supplement gives and the RDA database gives, you would have 99% + 210%, which is 309%. Higher. The two percentages should not be added together - they are percentages of different measurements.

The glitch, if there is any, is that fitday could ask you for the mg instead of the percentage (%RDA). I don't know the reasoning behind this, but it could be that labels cover a lot of territory - can you list something on a label without the mg and just give the RDA? Excuse me, I guess that would be DV.

People want to have that mg information interpreted, I'm sure - the FDA wants it to be shown in context, too. They have the DV: ' In order to limit consumer confusion, however, the label includes a single term (i.e., Daily Value (DV)), to designate both the DRVs and RDIs.' (from the text in the DV link given above...)

Does not limit consumer confusion, IMO. However, it is general enough to eliminate the gender and age thing - which the RDA takes into account (used by fitday).

But whatever the reasoning behind all the different designations, fitday is still going to use the measurement unit (mg, for example) and the RDA - as long as it uses the database of foods that everyone uses, and your age and gender do matter!

Last edited by Kathy13118; 09-30-2014 at 07:04 AM.
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