You may wonder why I decided on the address for this site as 35-10-35.com…
Today, 35-10-35 is becoming the commonly accepted standard to categorize healthy products. 35-10-35 means a product contains:
- No more than 35% of its calories from fat
- No more than 10% of its calories from saturated fat
- No more than 35% of its weight from sugar
This is the standard that is set forth by Fit Pick, a program created by the National Automatic Merchanising Associaton or NAMA (the trade association for the vending industry). See vending.org or fitpick.org
This is also the standard that is being accepted by more and and more school districts as well as states, including the State of Oregon.
The 35-10-35 is the “base” standard and often times, other criteria may be added such as limitations for calories, sodium, trans fats, etc.
It is important to note that in almost all cases you actually have to get a calculator and calculate numbers to determine if a product meets the requirements. The %DV on the Nutrition Facts is a completely different number than what this standard is looking at.
To calculate the fat percentage, you will take the calories of fat per serving and divide by total calories per serving.
To calculate the saturated fat percentage, you will take the calories of saturated fat per serving and divide by total calories per serving.
To calcualte the sugar percentage, you will take the grams of sugar and divide by the serving size in grams.
Note, if the number of calories from fat and/or calories from saturated fat are not given, you can calculate this by multiplying the number of fat grams by 9 (there are 9 calories per gram of fat or saturated fat).
