I was using the Amino Z food database to find the nutritional information of food. A 100g serving of a particular food contained the following: Protein: 3.3 g, Fat: 3.8 g (Saturated Fat: 2.5 g, Mono-Unsaturated Fat: 1.0 g, Poly-Unsaturated Fat: 0.3 g), Total Carbohydrates: 4.7 g (Complex Carbs: 0.0 g, Sugar: 4.7 g), Water: 87.6mL. I have added this up and it comes to 107.7g. What have I done wrong?

This is not an uncommon mistake when reading and understanding the nutritional information of a food.  We have the nutritional information on thousands of foods available in our

When using the nutritional panel, it is important to understand each component of the food.  In this example, we are considering the weight of the following nutrients:

• Water (1mL = 1g)
• Protein
• Fat
• Carbohydrate

In your question, you make mention of several subcategories contained within fat and carbohydrate:

Whilst there may be 3.8g of fat in total, 2.5g of this if saturated fat, 1g is mono-unsaturated fat and 0.3g is poly-unsaturated fat.  Saturated and unsaturated fats are types of fat.

Whilst there may be 4.7g of carbohydrates in total, there is 0g of complex carbohydrate and 4.7g of sugar.  Complex carbohydrate and sugar are both types of carbohydrate (so too is fibre).

Therefore, the total weight of these nutrients is 3.3 (protein) + 3.8 (fat) + 4.7 (carbohydrate) + 87.6 (water) = 96.4 which is less than the 100g portion measured.  There are other components to foods which do not fall under any of these categories which will make up for the remainder of the weight.

For more information on this topic, I recommend reading a course that I am publishing, entitled "Introduction to Physical Freedomcarbohydrate and fat is