When food manufacturers put nutrition info on their labels, they can either (a) invent the numbers (and risk going to prison) or (b) chemically analyse the food to see how much of it is saturated fat, or sodium, or vitamin A, or some other particular nutrient, mineral or vitamin. The analytical chemists, if they are honest and honourable, must know whether they can trust their own measurements – and so they test their equipment by first analysing some officially measured and certified “typical” foodstuff.
In the US, for just $787 (£540) one can buy the essence of an officially measured and certified “typical diet” – officially prepared and bottled by the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The money gets you 12 grams of blended, “freeze-dried homogenate of mixed diet foods”, delivered in a pair of six-ounce bottles.
An accompanying NIST document called Certificate of Analysis, Standard Reference Material 1548a, Typical Diet, makes no claims as to tastiness. The certificate notes that these possibly-delicious dollops are “not for human consumption”….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.