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(In the UK)

Nutrition Information on Custard

I have a packet of custard, which has the following ingredients: Maize starch, salt, Flavouring and Colour. The salt content on the nutrition information is 0.17% so I assume that the custard is almost entirely Maize Starch.

Wikipedia tells me that Maize Starch is the same as (in the UK) Cornflour. I have some of that in the cuboard and its nutritional information looks like this:

enter image description here

My question is: why is the nutritional information so different? Where did the Sugars come from? Why is there more protein? What's going on?

Joe
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1 Answers1

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You are comparing (100 g of custard made with some of this powder and some milk) to (100g of this powder) -- ignoring the salt, anyway.

The magic words are

As prepared with semi-skimmed milk

That's where the sugars and proteins come from, among other things.

Kate Gregory
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    aaaagggh! I CAN'T believe I missed that. – Joe Nov 08 '20 at 08:02
  • It's incredibly annoying that some UK labels don't give information on the product as sold, so you can't calculate the effect of using it slightly differently - but it happens. – Chris H Nov 08 '20 at 10:03
  • One product is called 'custard powder', the other 'corn flour', at least in the photos shown here. – Willeke Nov 08 '20 at 12:07
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    @Willeke - I'm not seeing your point. We know what the products are; the issue was missing the 'prepared with milk' difference [which I hadn't spotted either]. – Tetsujin Nov 08 '20 at 12:40
  • OP was comparing lemons with oranges, or more likely lemons with lemonade. The names on the packages show that it is not the same product. OP seems to have missed that fact and it is not clear in this answer either. – Willeke Nov 08 '20 at 12:44
  • @Willeke - No-one at any time said it was the same product, merely that one is comprised almost entirely of the other, which is true. – Tetsujin Nov 08 '20 at 12:56
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    @Willeke it is essentially the same product. Custard powder is almost entirely cornstarch. OP acknowledges this "The salt content on the nutrition information is 0.17% so I assume that the custard is almost entirely Maize Starch" which is correct. The nutritional difference is not because custard powder is different nutritionally from cornstarch but because prepared custard is different nutritionally from cornstarch. – Kate Gregory Nov 08 '20 at 12:56