The New Math?

As I was sharing a yogurt with my cat (something I do habitually, she loves yogurt), I glanced at the nutritional contents. This was a fat-free lemon-flavored yogurt (Publix brand, their yogurt is excellent). You know how they list Total Fat, then have subcategories for different types of fat? Here's what is listed:

Amount/Serving	Daily Value
Total Fat 0g	0%
Saturated Fat 0g	1%
Trans Fat 0g

So somehow, 0g of Saturated Fat provides 1% of your Daily Nutritional Value. But when you combine this to calculate Total Fat, you are back to 0. Must be the new math :-).

Notice that no Daily Value is provided for Trans Fat. Not sure why. One could assume that there is no recommended daily value for Trans Fat, so calculating it would lead to a divide-by-zero error. That's the old math for you.

To summarize this lesson:

• 0 / some number can= 1 (where "some number" is the daily recommended amount of saturated fat)
• 0% can= 1% + ??
  

(I am filing to copyright the new "can=" mathematical operator.)

Maybe that's why kids are not performing well in school these days? Too many real-world examples are being incorporated into the classroom? Need to get back to the abstract, meaningless math problems, one could argue.

Happy calculating!