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Considerations for Micronutrient Tracking:

Precision and Difficulty
In Part 3 of our five-part micronutrient article series, we discuss the (im)precision of
micronutrient tracking and how to track micronutrients.

by Greg Nuckols / August 7, 2023

W ith MacroFactor radically expanding its micronutrient analytics, we thought this

would be an opportune time to discuss micronutrients: what they are, what
micronutrient targets represent, and considerations for tracking micronutrient intake.

This is part three of a five-part series:

1) Understanding Micronutrient and Essential Nutrient Categories
2) Understanding Nutrient Targets
3) Considerations for Micronutrient Tracking: Precision and Difficulty
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4) Which Micronutrients Are Worth Monitoring?
5) Micronutrients are Important, But They Aren’t Everything

Our Knowledge Base also has an archive of additional information about each nutrient you
can track in MacroFactor, including what the nutrient actually does, the likelihood of
insufficient or excessive intake, and good food sources for each nutrient.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

The (im)precision of micronutrient tracking

If you want to track your micronutrient intake, you should be aware that estimates of
micronutrient intake based on food tracking data are far more imprecise than estimates of
macronutrient or energy intake based on food tracking data.

By law, the calories and macronutrients listed on a food label (typically) must be within 20%
of the actual values. That’s a feasible regulation to enforce, and food-level errors of that
magnitude produce considerably smaller errors in daily, weekly, and monthly calorie and
macronutrient counts.

Micronutrient labeling and reporting, on the other hand, is typically based on the
micronutrient content of standard reference foods. It’s simply not feasible to expect food
manufacturers to do a full vitamin and mineral assay on all of the foods they produce. So, if
a food contains 60g of spinach per serving, and a standard reference database says that
spinach has 16.8mg of vitamin C per 60g, the food is assumed to have 16.8mg of vitamin C
per serving.

However, actual micronutrient content can vary considerably within a single food product.

For example, a 2018 study testing different batches of baby spinach at different times of the
year found that baby spinach contained anywhere from 5.6-39.6mg of vitamin C per 60g
serving. And, unlike calorie and macronutrient content, errors in label claims may not wash
out over relatively short time scales, because vitamin C content significantly varied by
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season. In the winter, spinach averaged 26.16mg of vitamin C per 60g serving; in the
summer, it averaged just 10.74mg of vitamin C per 60g serving. So, for multiple months at a
time, your actual intake of vitamin C from spinach would be 35-40% lower than you thought
it was (based on your food tracking data), and for multiple months at a time, your actual
intake would be ~135% higher than you thought it was.

Now, I’ll readily admit that I cherry-picked a particularly extreme example to illustrate my
point. Most foods don’t have micronutrient contents that vary to that large of an extent, and
not all foods have micronutrient concentrations that exhibit significant seasonal variability.
But, micronutrient tracking is inherently a bit fuzzier than calorie and macronutrient
tracking. Calorie and macronutrient content may differ from label claims by up to 20%, but
micronutrient content can easily differ from label claims by 50% or more, due to seasonal
differences, regional differences (for instance, despite being next-door neighbors, scientists
tend to report higher vitamin A and vitamin C levels in German produce than in Dutch
produce), and variations in soil health and farming practices.

Much like calorie and macronutrient tracking, daily errors in micronutrient tracking should
be smaller than the errors present in individual foods. Calorie counts for individual products
may be off by up to 20%, but your daily tracking error should generally be smaller than 10%.
The same principle should apply to micronutrient tracking: the errors for individual foods
can be very large, but the error for a full day (or full week, or full month) of tracking should
generally be smaller. Unfortunately, we can’t model out the size of expected daily or weekly
errors because there’s not a comprehensive reference documenting the difference between
labeled and actual micronutrient contents for a representative set of food products. But,
given the data presented here, I think you can reasonably expect your actual daily
micronutrient intake to differ from your logged micronutrient intake by up to ~25%.

So, if you log 1000mg of calcium intake, it’s very unlikely that you actually consumed exactly
1000mg, but there’s a pretty decent chance that you actually consumed somewhere
between 750 and 1250mg of calcium.
However, there’s another major complication when it comes to tracking micronutrients:
most branded food items don’t report the contentmacrofactor
of most micronutrients.

How to track micronutrients

If you want to track your micronutrient intake, you should make a point of primarily logging
“common foods” in MacroFactor.

Government agencies don’t require food manufacturers to list all of the nutrients contained
in a food, and for good reason. The point of nutrition labels is to inform consumers about
the content of nutrients that are most likely to impact consumers’ health. If every nutrient
was listed on every nutrition label, the sheer size of the list would divert attention away from
higher-impact nutrients.

So, in most countries, food manufacturers are required to report energy content,
macronutrient content, sugar content, saturated fat content, fiber content, salt (or sodium)
content, and the content of micronutrients added specifically for the purpose of food
fortification (i.e. iron in many wheat-based products, or iodine in table salt). Beyond that,
some countries require food manufacturers to report the content of a small handful of
additional vitamins and minerals. For instance, the USDA requires US food manufacturers to
report iron, calcium, vitamin D, and potassium content.

All other nutrient labeling is voluntary, and most food manufacturers don’t go beyond the
bare minimum requirements.

For instance, a recent study reported on the frequency at which most nutrients were
reported on food labels in the UK. See if you can guess which nutrients are required to be
listed on UK nutrition labels, and which nutrients are only reported on a voluntary basis.
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To give a real-world example, here’s a photo of a nutrition label for a can of chickpeas from
my pantry:

The nutrients listed on the nutrition label are the nutrients mandated by the US government,
and nothing more.

Conversely, here’s a link to the same product in the USDA food database, which reports full
micronutrient content for thousands of foods. It shows that chickpeas also have non-zero
amounts of magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, vitamin A, all B
vitamins except for B-12, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, and choline.
So, if I wanted to closely track my micronutrient intake, logging a serving of chickpeas by
scanning the nutrition label of this product would result in undercounting of most
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micronutrients. Instead, I’d need to:

1. Calculate the energy content of my serving of chickpeas

2. Select the “common foods” entry for chickpeas
3. Adjust the serving size of the “common foods” chickpea entry to match the energy
content of my serving of chickpeas
4. Log the “common foods” serving of chickpeas

The “common foods” in MacroFactor come from research-grade databases (like the USDA
database and the NCCDB) with robust micronutrient reporting. So, if you want to track your
micronutrient intake, you’ll need to make a point of logging common foods, instead of
branded foods. If you primarily log branded foods, you’ll underestimate your intake of most
micronutrients.

When you search for foods in MacroFactor, history items (items you’ve logged previously)
will show up at the top of your search results, followed by custom foods you’ve created,
followed by common foods, with branded foods at the bottom.

To help with common food logging, make sure to expand the list of common food results by
tapping the “+15” arrow beside the “common” label. By default, your search results will show
you the 5 common foods that best match your search query (based on a combination of
text matching, and the frequency with which each food is logged). However, the specific
item you’d like to log may not show up in the top 5 results; expanding the list to 20 foods by
tapping the “+15” arrow will increase the probability of finding the common food you’d like
to log. You can see an example in the video below:
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0:00 / 0:16

For more complex foods, you might need to log individual common food ingredients that
roughly match the energy and macronutrient content of the food you’d like to log. For
instance, if you’re trying to log a branded egg and cheese sandwich in a way that will allow
for full micronutrient reporting, you might need to log common food entries for bread, eggs,
and cheese in amounts that roughly match the energy and macronutrient content of the
particular branded sandwich you’re consuming.

Conversely, if you do want to primarily log branded foods due to convenience, or because
you don’t care too much about closely monitoring your micronutrient intake, don’t stress
out if it looks like you’re under-consuming most micronutrients. You’re probably not. You’re
just logging foods that don’t have robust micronutrient reporting.

Since exclusively logging common foods is considerably more time-consuming and less
convenient than tracking branded food items, you might want to consider spot-checking
your micronutrient intake from time to time. For a week, make a point of exclusively (or
almost exclusively) logging common foods, while consuming your normal diet. That will
capture most of the upside associated with micronutrient tracking (letting you see which
nutrients you might be under- or over-consuming) while minimizing most of the downside
(the ongoing time cost of logging common foods instead of branded foods). As with most
things in life, micronutrient tracking doesn’t need to be approached with an all-or-nothing
attitude. macrofactor

Of course, if monitoring your micronutrient intake matters deeply to you, and you don’t
mind primarily logging common food items, there’s certainly nothing wrong with continuing
to track mostly common foods so that you can monitor your micronutrient intake on an
ongoing basis.

Rebecca laid out four general archetypes of micronutrient loggers in our announcement of
the new micronutrient features in MacroFactor. Most people will generally conform to one of
these four archetypes most of the time:

1. The Scale Shifter. This group will make no changes to their logging style because logging
anything at all, even exclusively Quick Adds, is enough to take advantage of MacroFactor’s
diet coaching systems, and to reach their exclusively body composition-related goals.
2. The Generalist. This group will have some additional health-related goals that involve
common nutrients that are often found on nutrition labels, such as: fiber, saturated fat,
sugar, or sodium. This group would be best served to avoid Quick Adds where possible,
and spot check commonly consumed branded products every once in a while.
3. The Optimizer. This group will have an interest in “optimizing” their diet for micronutrient
density, and will want to reference their nutrition intake versus almost every
micronutrient range we have. When possible, this group will need to rely exclusively on
common foods and break down multi-ingredient branded products into their common
food constituent parts.
4. The Auditor. This group will oscillate between periods of rigorous micronutrient tracking
to impact changes on their nutrition and periods of relaxed logging with emphasis on
reaching their caloric targets. This group will be best served with using common foods
exclusively during their nutrition audits and defaulting to using a combination of common
foods, Quick Adds, and branded products during the majority of their app use.

Of note, it’s totally fine to be a Scale Shifter, Generalist, or Auditor. Most people don’t need
to closely monitor all of their micronutrients, all of the time. But, if you do want to closely
monitor your micronutrient intake, try to make a point of almost exclusively logging
“common foods.”
The table below summarizes the mandatory nutrient reporting requirements in the US,
Canada, Australia, and the EU. It will serve as a handy reference for which nutrients you can
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easily track by scanning barcodes and searching for branded foods, and which nutrients will
require you to primarily log “common foods” if you’d like to monitor your intake. If a nutrient
is only reported on a voluntary basis where you live, you’ll probably need to mostly log
“common foods” if you’d like to accurately track your intake of that nutrient.
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Note: In most countries, food manufacturers are required to list micronutrients added to foods for
fortification purposes. Food manufacturers are also typically required to list micronutrients they make
specific claims about (i.e. if the food packaging says “this food is a good source of Vitamin E,” Vitamin E

content would need to be disclosed on the nutrition label).

Confidently control your nutrition

Download and start your free trial to get your custom macro plan and food logging access
today.

Related articles
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Micronutrients Are Important, But They Aren’t Everything

In the last installment of our five-part micronutrient article series, we discuss the limits of micronutrient
tracking for the purpose of planning a healthy diet.

August 11, 2023

Which Micronutrients Are Worth Monitoring?
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In Part 4 of our five-part micronutrient article series, we discuss which micronutrients you should
consider monitoring.

August 9, 2023

Understanding Nutrient Targets

In Part 2 of our five-part micronutrient article series, we discuss nutrient targets: where they come from,
what they mean, and how to think about them.

August 4, 2023

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