10 Nutrition-Related Facts You’ll Probably Never Need To Know

My days are literally blending together. For the past 10+ days I’ve seriously done the exact same thing – put on sweat pants and study for my upcoming dietitian exam. This is the big one. The exam that I had to spend the last 3+ years going to school for to even qualify to take and that determines my official “RD” title.

In addition to all the critical material a dietitian should know, it just so happens that this exam requires me to know a seemingly HUGE amount of useless nutrition related information, too. Information that I will most likely promptly erase from my brain the second I walk out the testing center door.

You would think that with all this information in my brain, I’d have an amazing post to give you. I know – I’m overdue. But can you wait a little longer? I’ve got all these great topics in my head and none seem to be panning out in this mess of studying.

So for this week I’m going to share with you what I’m learning. Relearning. Memorizing.

Who knows. Maybe, (someday), you’ll find them useful? If for nothing else, it’s helping me…yet another way to drive them into my tired brain. Thanks for sticking with me.  See you next week!

1. We lose 1 liter of water to insensible losses every day. (Which means you better make sure you’re drinking twice that!)
2. “Propionate” is a chemical food preservative used to prevent mold. (Stick to fresh foods!)
3. The top 3 foods they tell you prevent dental caries include cheese, meat and nuts. I’d say just avoid a lot of sugar sweetened beverages and brush those teeth!
4. When you’re charged with the budgeting process, project your revenue first
5. Methylene is added to some types of coffee to decaffeinate it
6. In foodservice they use “scoops” for cost control. The bigger the scoop # the smaller the measure. A #60 scoop is < .5 oz while a #6scoop is 5 ounces…I know, right???!
7. For (future) reference, breast milk contains 20 calories per ounce.
8. We can thank cream of tarter for making our angel food cakes so angelic. Without it we would have a tough, yellow, small cake.
9.  The maximum number of calories that can be in a food labeled “low calorie” is 40.
10. Dietary Reference Intakes, DRI’s, replaced RDA’s, which cannot be set without the EAR. If there’s no EAR you can use the AI. UL’s set the upper limit.