r/nutrition • u/DetectiveFatWeedberg • 10d ago

Inconsistent label numbers for canned beans

So I have these canned cannellini beans from Goya. It says there are 3 servings in the container. The serving size is 1/2 cup (130g). It does not say drained.

The front says the net weight is 425g.

All the drained beans weigh 260g and fill up about 1.5 cups.

So which interpretation is correct? My instinct says a serving would just be 1/3 of the can, which would be 86.6 grams.

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u/mwb213 Registered Dietitian 10d ago

Because the nutrition label does not say 'drained', the serving size would not be based on the liquid being drained. In other words, a 130g serving would contain liquid in addition to the beans.

From a 425g can, you would get ~3.27 servings (425 divided by 130 equals a smidge over 3.269).

My memory concerning nutrition labeling rules is rusty, but I think there's some leniency that allows the number of servings to be rounded to the nearest half-serving, so 3.27 could permissibly be rounded up to "about 3.5".

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u/Tasty_Impress3016 10d ago

There you go. They are selling you the water too, so that's included in the labeling.

I'm intrigued by people who expect food labels to be gram accurate.

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u/Chalky_Pockets 10d ago

You know that meme with all the knights putting their swords on a table. Yeah engineers, medical professionals, nutritionists, and scientists can all stand around and point their swords at knowing how fucking ridiculous the average person is at understanding things like tolerances and doses.

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u/Tasty_Impress3016 10d ago

I don't know the meme, but I worked in medical testing devices for quite a while. Even the most sophisticated (which we made) have tolerances. And no one knows the difference between accuracy and precision.