I thought I would do some guesswork on the 100% natural unfortified V8 using Cron-o-meter. I know from the pack it is 87% tomatoes, and the rest of the ingredients are always listed on packs in order of amount so I have assumed that the carrots are 5%, celery and beetroot 2% each and the rest 1% each.
This gives a calorie content per 100ml serving of 19.7 which is not far off what the pack suggests – about 20 cals.
120 calories worth of this product supply 32% of my RDA of potassium, 14% zinc, and 22% vitamin E, and impressive amounts of B vitamins. Not a superstar but still pretty good. As well as a drink (and its very good in hot weather with lots of ice) it is a good base for sauces and soups.
6 comments:
Given that the ingredient lists are the same, I bet that the US and UK versions of this are similar. And the USDA did test pretty much all the V8 drinks for some nutrients, including potassium and vitamin E. If you start here and do a search on v8 and then pick the 100% vegetable juice one you can set a serving size (e.g. 600 grams will give you 120 calorie serving). They found it has 1158mg potassium but no vitamin E. It's possible that it doesn't survive the processing.
Since the USDA database is reporting 6.96 grams of ash, I think this represents independent testing on their part. But maybe they just took Campbell's word for the vitamin E, listing it as zero. Vitamin E testing is spotty, so we are probably getting more than most nutrition programs think we are.
Tomato juices (and pastes), carrot juice, and, my favorite, coconut water (not milk, the water) are all excellent sources of potassium. The USDA lists a canned carrot juice as being high in vitamin E, but I've never found a canned carrot juice and who knows what they tested to get the figure for that. Would love to find it, if it truely is a natural, unfortified source.
Oh, one other issue: check your ingredient label for sodium. The regular v8 has more sodium than potassium and the reason the RDA is so high for potassium is because the average diet is high in sodium and they are trying to correct the ratio. So regular US V8 is a poor choice. Campbell does make a low sodium version in the US that, according to the USDA database has double the potassium and much less sodium (for 600grams, it has 126 calories, 2022mg K, and 348mg Na).
But it's worth shopping around for vegetable juice -- and at least in the US, many do list potassium on the label since they are such a good source.
Apologies for monopolizing your blog, but I, too, am fascinated with getting the biggest nutrition bang for the calorie buck.
Just wanted to point you to nutrition data, where you can do such things as rank all food by vitamin E content per 200 calories
I'd ignore the pignon nut figure, that seems like a data anomaly. You can narrow it by category too, but you do have to weed through useless listings like fortified foods and very low calorie foods like clam juice or coffee. But you can see how great greens do. I love making smoothies with raw swiss chard and beet greens, they taste so good. They both rank high in E (although they are also high are in oxalic acid which is a minus). But that site is good for browsing by nutrient/calorie densities. It also demonstrates how spicing up your food can help. E.g. a tsp of paprika has 3% of daily vitamin E.
I found a low-sodium store brand here in Canada (Presidents Choice Blue Label) that's pretty much all-natural (it does have added Vitamin C).
This whole 'vegetable juice' discussion has been eye opening for me. I was at a pub with friends and I ordered a tomato juice in place of the more caloric alternative (a sugar packed vodka cooler).
The V8 also comes in cans, so I can take it on my annual camping trip this summer!
Artemis - Thanks for all the great information you've posted here. I wasn't even aware of the NutritionData site. I've been exploring the tools on it this morning and it's fantastic! Very useful!
Thanks for all the info - lots of exploring to do - even if I didn't get it right first time it has moved me on. I started using V8 when my blender bust but am planning to get a new one soon and want to try lots of combinations of fresh veg and fruit. I wonder what lettuce and kiwi would taste like? Worth trying once!
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