Nutrition labels in Japan vs US?

Hi all! I’m hoping someone might know something about this because I’ve found it quite frustrating. I’ve noticed that for food items I’ve bought here in Japan that have both an English (often US) nutrition label and a Japanese nutrition label have significantly different numbers for certain ingredients. I know that Japanese nutrition labels often account for a 100g serving, but I’ll give you an example where this is not the case.

I recently bought a box of the Quaker Oats instant oatmeal packs here, so it’s got an English and Japanese nutrition label. The Japanese nutrition label specifically states it’s for a 43g serving, which is the same as the English label. The English label says it has 160 calories and 12g of sugar for each 43g pack. The Japanese label however says each 43g pack is 166 calories and 29.9 grams of sugar?! That’s an insanely huge difference and it makes me wonder how these ingredients are counted differently in Japan vs maybe the US. Does anyone have any information about this?? I need to keep better track of my sugar intake and I don’t know what to believe.

5 comments
  1. >29.9 grams of sugar?!

    According to the American label there is 33g carbs, including 4 grams of dietary fiber. So the “sugar” (actually carbs excluding fiber) ends up at 29g. 29.9g rounded down will be 29g. The 12g is just added sugars, so not including natural sugars for example.

    Looking at the American label, all numbers are round. No decimals, rounded down to the closest 10 or 1 etc. It’s probably just that the Japanese Labels are more accurate.

  2. The 17.9 gram difference in sugar count should equate to something like 72 more calories, but this isn’t the case on the label, as you say. Something else is going on – a linguistic issue or a genuine typo. As someone else pointed out, Japan sometimes doesn’t specify the amount of sugar, just total carbohydrates, which will be the dominant macro in oatmeal

  3. Yeah hate it. Basically no product here will tell you the sugar content, only total carbs. Its fucking annoying.

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