Math help

[RStar]

I need help with a pretty simple math question that I can't seem to wrap my mind around. Math, as you may know by some of my posts, is not my strong point.

If I have 2% of salt in a recipe (hot sauce) and I need to find the mg per 5mL serving (assuming specific gravity is 1- I'll check it later)....

2 grams in 100 grams times 1000 grams is 2000. Divide by 5 grams (converting from 5 mL) is 200mg. Is that right? That seems high, as my hot sauce doesn't seem as salty as some that list up to 150 mg sodium.

It just occured to me.....salt is sodium chloride. NOT pure sodium. So, 1.5g salt is 590 sodium (from the nutritional label on the salt). 1500mg divided by 590 is 25.42 (% sodium in sodium chloride). So does that make my hot sauce 79mg sodium (rounding to whole number)? This makes more since.

So, is my math any good?

[RStar]

Crap. I just noticed an error right off the bat.

2000 divided by 5 is 400. duh.

Then if salt is approx. 25% sodium, that makes the total 100mg.

Is that right?

[Tref]

Originally Posted by RStar

So, is my math any good?

It's as good as your recipe for hot sauce.

[RStar]

Well, my hot sauce is very good! So, my math must be good then!

As soon as I get these labels done, the hot sauces will be on the market. They are so good people have been begging me to sell it.....

[Tref]

So this is for real? Well, I cannot help you with the math, but good luck with the hot sauce.

[Strangler Lewis]

I'm no expert, and I've certainly bought my share of jams from the nice ladies at the farmer's market who claim to cook in their kitchen and whose jars are not necessarily sealed. However, if you are truly trying to market something, I wonder if regulations might not require you to be a bit more exacting in your labeling, packaging etc.

Maybe you're already on top of it. Maybe Gn2Dlnd has insights. At any rate, good luck with it.

[Alex]

Doesn't California require that any food sold commercially be prepared in a certified (by the county health deparment) commercial kitchen?

Of course, now I can't remember if Rstar is in California.

[RStar]

Yes, I'm in California, and yes it does need to be made in a certified kitchen. My brother installs fire supression systems in resturaunts, so I have all the kitchens I need. And the labeling for hot sauce needs the nutritional label, and that's what I'm working on. The only thing to claim is sodium, there is less than 1 gram/serving of everything else. I'm a cosmetic formulator, so I know how to do all of the labeling, manufacturing, testing and stuff. I did brush up on food law, mainly the low acid canned food (LACF) law that hot sauce falls under. I just have to keep my pH below 4.6, as listed in title 21 of the FDA code, parts 108, 113, and 114. My product is 3.3 to 3.8 pH. and I have tested for the absence of microbial growth and passed each time. I'm also a cook, and I am very familiar with food canning practices. And I have formulas that can be processed in a plant should it take off.

It's just the math I want to check to make sure I'm right. I barely passed intro to algebra in HS, and never had any more. I never thought I'd need it (yeah, right!).

I can spend $500 per label to have it done for me (I have 3 recipes) which is a lot of hot sauce sales to recoupe. And I would do it if it was any other kind of food, but it's all zeros except the sodium, two recipes at 2% and one at 3%. And because they round on the label to the nearest tens, (example 79mg becomes 80mg) it doesn't have to be super acurate.

So, at 2% salt, it's approx 2 grams in 100 grams of hot sauce (technically it would be 2gm in 98gm so it's less than 2%, but I'm not going there), would be 2 grams multiplied by 1,000 to get the milligrams is 2,000mg per 100 grams product.

So, if a 1.5g serving of salt is 590mg sodium, that would be 0.59g per 1.5g salt. Divide 0.59 by 1.5 = 0.39g sodium per 1g salt.

2,000mg salt per 100g product, divide by 100 to get 20mg per 1g product. Now if I multiply by 0.39 (% sodium) I get 7.8mg sodium/g of product, multiply by 5 servings is 39mg sodium per serving (which will round to 40mg/serving; and make the 3% salt recipe 60mg/serving).

Any math experts out there to check my math? Each time I run it I come up with something different.....

[Alex]

If the assumption that 1 gram of hot sauce equals 1 mL of hot sauce then that math does sound correct for determining mg Na/5 mL hot sauce.

That said, I don't know how reliable that assumption is. Easiest way would be to precising weigh a known volume of finished hot sauce. I just tested with Tapatio and Tabasco and both sank readily in water, which means it is denser which means your mg/5mL is going to higher than your mg/mg. How much off, I have no idea (and your sauce may be less dense of course).

[RStar]

Originally Posted by Alex

If the assumption that 1 gram of hot sauce equals 1 mL of hot sauce then that math does sound correct for determining mg Na/5 mL hot sauce.

That said, I don't know how reliable that assumption is. Easiest way would be to precising weigh a known volume of finished hot sauce. I just tested with Tapatio and Tabasco and both sank readily in water, which means it is denser which means your mg/5mL is going to higher than your mg/mg. How much off, I have no idea (and your sauce may be less dense of course).

Thanks Alex! My hot sauce might not be so dense, but I am!

Yes, you are correct in that I will need to get the specific gravity for my hot sauce. This will allow the proper conversion for weight (grams) to volume (Millileter). But I'm sure, from my experience, that it is real close to 1.0 (I estimate 1.05 to 1.15). Even that little bit over 1.0 (which is water) will cause negative buoyancy enough to drop to the bottom, this is because of the solids in the vegetables and would make the final result still round out to 40mg Na/5ml hot sauce.

Oh, and my hot sauce is tastier, and hotter, than both Tapatio and Tabasco!