Issue with accurate measured levels of zinc for food options

edited March 2019 in Ask An Expert

According to cronometer I am 90% or higher on all my levels but then i am at 60% on zinc. I looked up top foods that have zinc to get my levels to an appropriate level. I was testing some of the foods at certain grams to see where the levels would get me so i can incorporate them in my diet... but! It looks like it's an issue on cronometers part. Apparently 1/4 a cup (32g) of pumpkin seeds has 0mg (0% of 11mg daily for men) of zinc which is absurdly wrong. It should be around 2.5mg (22.73% of 11mg daily for men). I briefly checked cashews and spinach with similar results. It makes me wonder how many foods are inaccurately measured for zinc.
Explanation? fix?

Comments

  • Hi Aarrow,

    This may be due to the source of the foods you are looking at. For most brand name products in our database (sources like ESHA, Nutritionix, CRDB, UPC) will have the nutrition information given by the manufacturer. Typically they only include the nutrients required by law on the nutrition label and does not include zinc. The nutrient values are left blank for these foods if they are unknown, whereas if they are known to be zero, you will see a 0 value entered when viewing the nutrient profile in the Foods tab.

    We have other sources that include a much more comprehensive nutrient profile - try searching for the generic equivalents of these foods in the Common Foods tab. This will limit your search results to our highest quality databases with much more nutrition information to offer.

    For example, "Pumpkin or Squash Seeds, Shelled, Unsalted" from NCCDB has 2.44 mg zinc per 32 g serving.
    "Cashews, Raw" from NCCDB has 1.73 mg per 30 g serving.
    "Spinach, Raw" from NCCDB has 0.16 mg zinc per 1 cup (30 g) serving.

    Learn more about getting the most nutrition information using Cronometer here: https://cronometer.com/blog/6-tips-getting-nutrition-data/

    Best,

    Karen Stark
    cronometer.com
    As always, any and all postings here are covered by our T&Cs:
    https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/27/governing-terms-and-disclaimer

  • Thank you very much for taking the time to reply Karen

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