Biscuits and Nutrition

Biscuits and Nutrition

Biscuits are a valuable and convenient form of food enjoyed in nearly every country in the world. They are basically composed of a cereal (usually wheat flour), sugars and fats with small additions of other materials.

In most countries it is necessary to declare the composition as a list of ingredients, written in descending order of magnitude. This helps those with food intolerances to see whether the biscuits may contain something that they should not eat.

Additives, such as chemicals, colours and flavours, must be declared with names defined in local regulations and sometimes a code number is also to be shown.

With increasing interest in nutrition it is commonly the case that not only a list of ingredients must be shown on the packaging for biscuits but also details of basic nutritional analysis.

A typical declaration would be,

Nutritional values per 100g

Energy, kcal 536.1

Protein, g 10.2

Carbohydrate, g 55.5

Fat, g 30.3

The declarations of ingredients by order of magnitude and the table of nutritional values are useful for product developers who are aiming to copy existing products.

See also How may nutritional calculations be made and be useful for product development?