This tutorial will walk through a simple approach to reverse engineering food on Tastynow.com The goal here is to determine the amounts of each ingredient present in a commercial food product. We will also figure out how popcorn is made using only the nutrition panel and ingredient statement. This demonstration will use Kettle Corn to show how distinct ingredients in a product simplify the reverse engineering process.  

The first step is to log into your tastynow.com account and select “new recipe”.

Next, enter the package information for nutrition facts, serving size, and ingredient statement. I start off by entering each ingredient with an amount of 1 as a placeholder because at this point the amounts are unknown.

Here is the ingredient list from the back panel:

And the Nutrition Panel

See here how the information has been entered.

Save this information and now we can begin reverse engineering. To start, I am going to fill in as much of the easy-to-get information as possible. I will start by leveraging the nutrition profiles of the distinct ingredients.

1 st Step: Establish distinct ingredient amounts within one serving size

Notice that each ingredient in this popcorn is nutritionally different from the rest

• Popcorn is mostly Carbohydrate
• Sugar is completely Sugar
• Safflower Oil is completely Fat
• Salt contains 39% Sodium

Because each ingredient is distinct, I can be certain that each ingredient is only contributing to one or two of the nutrition amounts.  For example, we can be certain that the fat content on the nutrition label of this product completely comes from added Safflower oil because no other ingredient contains fat. The same goes for Salt.

So, how do distinct ingredients help? Start by adjusting the ingredient amounts to equal one serving. Look at the nutrition panel and we know that there are 8 grams of fat per 28g serving. We know that all of the fat comes from Safflower Oil. So set the amount of Safflower Oil to 8. Continue on with Sugar; 8g of sugar per 28g serving so set the sugar amount to 8.

Did you notice the Nutrition calculator recalculates each time the amount of an ingredient is changed? Salt is 39% sodium so you can do the math or just increase the amount of salt until the nutrition calculator shows 110mg sodium.

2 nd Step: Subtract Similar Ingredients

Total Carbohydrates are tricky because they are a combination of simple and complex carbohydrates coming from both sugar and popcorn. We will use the Granulated Sugar amount to discover the relative amount of Popcorn. It is key to note that Popcorn does not include any Added Sugar so we can be certain all of the Added Sugar is coming from Granulated sugar.  If the Sugar amount is removed from the Total Carbohydrate amount we are left with the Popcorn amount which is the only other carbohydrate source. Now that we know there are 8g of Sugar per 28g serving, subtract 8g from 17g Total carbohydrates to get 9g of popcorn per 28g serving.

3 ed Step: Fill in Unlisted ingredients

Using the first two approaches, all four listed ingredient amounts are accounted for along with their nutrition composition. Notice that even though the target nutrition panel is similar to the calculated nutrition panel there is still a difference in the serving size. The current amount of ingredients sum to 25.26g and the serving size is 28g. Where do the extra 2.74 grams come from? The answer is water. Water does not have nutrition amounts, is not required to be added to the label, and is used in most food manufacturing processes. So, using water as a placeholder for the unaccounted difference in serving weight is a reasonable assumption.

Enter “water” as the fifth ingredient with an amount of 2.74g to make up for the difference in serving weight. Now the calculated nutrition amounts should now be close to the target and the serving weight should match.

4 th Step: Adjust ingredient amounts to find perfect proportions.

At this point, the calculated and target nutrition profiles are similar but not exactly the same due to the rounding error on small numbers. For example, 8g of fat could reasonably be rounded up from 7.50g or down from 8.49g. We will need to look at the recipe in finer detail to discover the exact amount. Press the 100%Base button to view the recipe in Total Percent. This adjusts the recipe to equal 100%.

Now make small adjustments to each ingredient amount so that the “Target” and “Calculated” nutrition profiles match. Click on each nutrition type to highlight the amount present “per serving” in the recipe and the amount present “per 100g” of ingredients. For example, If you see that “Total Fat” is higher than the target 8g, click on it to display the “Total Fat” “Per Serving” and “Per 100g ingredient”. Use this information to select the ingredient contributing most to “total fat” and then adjust the ingredient amount down so that the calculated fat per serving is close to 8g. This step can take a while.

5 th Step: Look at the food from a manufacturing perspective to discover the processing steps.

Look at the formula and two proportions stand out; the salt-to-water ratio. This recipe is showing salt at half the amount of water which also happens to be the saturation point; the most amount of salt can dissolve in the least amount of water. This recipe has been optimized to deliver salt in a dissolved form and limit the amount of water added. This makes sense because adding too much water will reduce the crispiness of the popcorn and fluids are easier to apply than solids in a manufacturing environment.

Considering the manufacturing process, using a saturated salt solution would make flavor easier to apply with a spray application to air-popped corn. The oil is also suitable for a spray application, but oil and water would separate and cause problems in the spraying application. It would require more expensive equipment to spray the salt and oil on separately. It would be cheaper to combine the spray of oil, salt, and water with the addition of an emulsifier like lecithin. In this case, the emulsifier may have been considered a Processing Aid and left off the final label. However, with most companies, it is common practice to include lecithin in the ingredient statement.

It is also possible this corn was popped in oil using a more expensive batch process. This would then mean the water/salt solution was sprayed on after popping and the popcorn is tossed in sugar as a final step. However, given the low price point, I expect oil popping is unlikely.

We can be certain the sugar is not sprayed on because there is not enough water in the system to dissolve it. If the oil, water, and salt mix are sprayed onto freshly popped popcorn it would hydrate the popcorn starch making it easy for sugar to stick to. Applying sugar as the last step is the most logical conclusion.

Now you have it.

We started with the nutrition panel and ingredient declaration. Now we know the amounts of each ingredient proportional to each other and the most likely way the ingredients were assembled together. The next step is to prove we are right by going to the kitchen and making it.

You can view this recipe live on tastynow.com to search for Kettle Corn Organic Popcorn- Organics

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