Nutrient Search Tool: Decoding Your Results

Q. I used the Nutrient Search Tool to look up vegetables high in calcium and found freeze-dried chives and freeze-dried leeks near the top of the list. However, when I went to the listings, they showed that the foods contained zero calcium. Is this an error?

A.  Depending on what you select in the Nutrient Search Tool, the results are based on either 100g serving sizes or 200-calorie serving sizes.  A 100 grams of dried chives is a whole heck of a lot of chives and contains a whole heck of a lot of calcium--813 mg to be exact.  Dried chives are about 8% calcium by weight.

When you go to the individual listing, however, you'll see the default serving displayed: 1 tablespoon, which weighs just 1/4 of a gram.    In this serving size, the amount of calcium is small enough to be considered 0. (If you change the serving size for the chives to 100g, you will see the calcium numbers change.)

Obviously, it would be hard to consume enough dried chives or leeks to supply a meaningful amount of calcium--but our search tool doesn't know that. It simply looks at 100g portions of every food and picks the ones with the most calcium. For more useful suggestions, try scanning the results for foods that are more commonly eaten in 100 gram quantities (such as frozen collards).

Here's another post on How to use the Nutrient Search Tool (better)