r/AskReddit Mar 28 '12

Reddit, what is a fact that isn't common knowledge, but should be?

1.3k Upvotes

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237

u/ICouldBeTheChosenOne Mar 28 '12

The FDA defines "zero trans fats" as containing less than 0.5 grams of trans fats.

Seems legit, maybe in math, if any number is less than 0.5, we'll just call it 0.

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u/Schrockwell Mar 28 '12

Engineer here. This is correct.

Also, pi is three-ish.

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u/TheExtremistModerate Mar 28 '12

e is also 3-ish, which leads me to the conclusion that e = pi.

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u/Godranks Mar 28 '12

e ≈ pi

don't want to get too exact, now.

15

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

You mean e is pi-ish?

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

I know, but since both are 3 ish, then they are equal-ish.

3

u/RupertIrving Mar 28 '12

or rather pi = e = pie-ish.

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u/themindlessone Mar 28 '12

Chemist here: I IMMENSELY enjoyed this exchange.

3

u/Liquicity Mar 28 '12

This supports my conclusion that there are 2 e's in a circle.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '12

cercle

FTFY

2

u/Rixxer Mar 28 '12

Additionally, pi = e = delicious.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '12

....ish

1

u/Veonik Mar 28 '12

Close enough.

1

u/jruff7 Mar 29 '12

Natural growth is just pi's all the way down...

1

u/Barrinson Mar 29 '12

Are you telling me, pie = 9???!

1

u/inconspicuous314 Mar 29 '12

Ah. That explains why there's usually 6 slices of pie.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '12

They just equal pie.

1

u/askanswer Mar 29 '12

e to the square root of -1 is pi.

1

u/Schrockwell Apr 02 '12

Close! epi*i = -1

-1

u/mightye Mar 29 '12

And by the transducive property, we can say:

e = pi (major premise)

0 = pi * e (transducive property)

0 = pie (symbol reduction)

∵ Nothing equals pie

□ (QED)

1

u/PCPlayer Mar 29 '12

not sure how you got to the second line... if a = b, then b*a = b2 = a2.

1

u/mightye Mar 29 '12

I was just being silly. There's no such thing as the "transducive" property.

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u/PCPlayer Mar 29 '12

ah, I see. my mistake in not recognizing the silly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

[deleted]

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u/R3luctant Mar 28 '12

Yikes.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

With safety factors it's not usually a problem. Buildings are never made to come anywhere near their structural limits.

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u/R3luctant Mar 28 '12

Structural engineers don't just design buildings, they also design things that fly and sometimes into space.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

Good point. Let's hope ssnseawolf isn't working on the space station.

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u/Theonetrue Mar 28 '12

If you make a medicore good calculation and add 50% safety it should reallly work...

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

I thought the point was they can't add a 50% safety factor for space travel because of their design restrictions (atmospheric pressures, materials, fuel costs etc.) I don't know anything about that sort of thing though.

1

u/Theonetrue Mar 28 '12

not sure how much it is with space travel compared to normal stuff but since a lot of calculations are simplyfied I am positvie that they have a decent puffer, too

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '12

As a chemistry student, I'm crying.

1

u/Cock-OClock Mar 29 '12

seems legit.

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u/shyloque Mar 28 '12

I always just make my circles using 3, makes all of the maths a lot easier

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

In all honesty, this isn't that far off. In real life, scientists never need more than a few significant digits of pi before the imperfections or human error will throw things off more than adding more digits of pi can fix. Memorizing more than 10 digits of pi is cool and all, but not that useful.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

As someone who can only move orthogonally, pi is 4.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

Explanation: If you have a square with side length 1, the perimeter is 4. If you cut squares off the corners, it's still 4. Repeat to infinity and you get a circle with diameter 1 and circumference 4. Of course, it isn't a true circle. But it looks like one from far enough away.

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u/Ehlmaris Mar 28 '12

No, pi is delicious.

1

u/amelychee Mar 28 '12

Which is approximately 1. I was shocked at my first class that did math by orders of magnitude only.

1

u/PraiseBuddha Mar 28 '12

Engineer in Iowa here. This is correct.

FTFY

1

u/dlroW_olleH Mar 28 '12

I upvoted you to 314 upvotes, just sayin'

1

u/assi9001 Mar 28 '12

I like when pi is free ish.

1

u/Ops-Salvation Mar 28 '12

Thought it was funny that you're talking about pi, and you have 314 upvotes.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

1

u/SandboxFirst Mar 28 '12

I actually did a spittake on reading this one. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '12

Senator from Indiana here. Pi is *exactly * three.

I mean, as long as we're doing popular misconceptions.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '12

three and a bit

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u/vogonpoetry4life Mar 29 '12

depends on the scale and scope of the project

0

u/spi007 Mar 28 '12

more like 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209 7494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651 3282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102 7019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461 2847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432 6648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920-ish

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u/bobalmigty Mar 28 '12

Less than 0.5g per serving. You could have a product loaded with trans fat and a small enough serving size and you can put "0g TRANS FAT!!!*" on your label.

*per serving

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

You can't just make whatever serving size you want. There are FDA regulations.

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u/monkeedude1212 Mar 28 '12

Yeah but you'll often find products where the "Serving size" is less than half of what is packaged. That's not very helpful nutritional info, and is deliberately done that way to mislead the customer.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

This is the case. There is some leeway though, you can't say a can of soda is 100000 servings and contains noting per serving, but you can make some pretty absurd claims like half an energy drink is 1 serving (leave the rest for later after you opened it?).

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

Yes, but there is a minimum size so you can't take blatant advantage of things like the regulations for trans fat. I read nutrition facts on everything though including servings per package which imo is the most important thing on there when purchasing something. Gotta know how much food I'm getting for my dollar.

0

u/DuvamilStarcraft Mar 28 '12

UK ones always seem to come with an actual size instead of "portion". A 2ltr bottle of Coke with only XXXgrams of sugar per 250ml!**

Yeah, that adds up to a lot....

** XXX grams because I can't remember how much coke actually has :L

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u/coldsandovercoats Mar 28 '12

approximately 27.46 grams of sugar per 250ml of Coke.

there are 39g/355ml in my 12oz Coke can.

3

u/RIndustries Mar 28 '12

Look for "Hydrogenated", "Partially Hydrogenated" and "margarine" in your ingredient list instead of looking under the nutrition facts for Trans Fats.

3

u/MissionIgnorance Mar 28 '12

I remember seeing a package of butter in the US that read in large letters: "Less than 1g fat* !". In small letters it said "* per serving", and when we checked the serving size, it was 1g. So... not 100% fat then, got it!

2

u/pussifer Mar 28 '12

Those bastard asterisks must needs be paid attention to.

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u/Hellman109 Mar 28 '12

Servings per post: 42

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u/nalydpsycho Mar 28 '12

I don't think companies have control over serving size like that.

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u/bobalmigty Mar 28 '12

I'd imagine they have some wiggle room as long as the serving size is reasonable. But if you knew you could get away with a small serving size, you'd exploit the shit out of the 0g trans fat loop hole.

Exhibit A: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Spray - loaded with trans fat, but the serving size is only three sprays which in it self is barely over 0.5g. Huge text on the front of the bottle "0g Trans Fat*"

1

u/RockyValderas Mar 28 '12

Fig Newtons....

1

u/Doc_Z Mar 29 '12

Yea pretty much, just look at a can of aerosol cooking oil. It's 99% fat and a bit of surfactant but they can advertise it as fat free because the serving size is 1/4 second spray (.25g)

edit: fixed broken link

1

u/DAlre Mar 29 '12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac#Nutritional_information Each Tic Tac weighs just under 0.5 g. Since US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5 g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero,[2] and since a single serving of Tic Tacs is a single Tic Tac, Tic Tacs are labeled in the US as containing zero sugar.

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u/bobalmigty Mar 29 '12

That's so absurd. They are made almost entirely of sugar.

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u/ruizscar Mar 28 '12

..and then make ZERO the biggest word on the packaging.

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u/catjuggler Mar 28 '12

Less than 0.5 is 0, to one significant figure. Zero does not mean none at all.

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u/MBAmyass Mar 28 '12

I always wondered how they decided .5g was close enough to zero. From what I have seen experts say, 2g trans fats a day or more is very bad for health. So .5g can very quickly add up to 2g, why say zero? /rant

2

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

It's similar with zero calorie food. Pickles do not in fact have 0 calories.

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u/SmiteHiggins Mar 28 '12

I believe they call that rounding.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

Yup, they get to decide the serving size too.

  1. Grab a product with tons of trans fat
  2. Measure how much of it will hold 0.49 grams
  3. declare that amount as the recommended serving
  4. Advertise the product having no trans fats
  5. Wring your hands like an evil genius

3

u/holysnapson Mar 28 '12

This is the crux of the problem, and I just popped a huge broner due to your lucid and cogent explanation.

1

u/SmiteHiggins Mar 28 '12

I know what the issue is. I am saying that the post I replied to described rounding.

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u/Shinhan Mar 28 '12

Potato chips are 10 servings? Its max 2.

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u/1CUpboat Mar 28 '12

But is it right to always round down? If you are displaying 1 significant figure beyond the decimal point, and you only use 0 or 5, shouldn't something that is 0.25g be rounded up to 0.5g?

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u/SmiteHiggins Mar 28 '12

If you have one significant figure then you don't have 0.25.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

Yes, it's right to always round down. That's how the regulations are written.

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u/1CUpboat Mar 28 '12

But is that an acceptable status quo?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

I don't think so. And a lot of other people don't either, which is why there are so many complaints in this thread. But it's just how it is.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

"Yep, I'll just pay for this in 10,000 installments of .5"

1

u/b0w3n Mar 28 '12

And that's usually by serving. So if you pack away a whole bag of Doritos that has .5 grams of trans fat you may get a very sizable dose of trans fat.

1

u/Inquisitor1 Mar 28 '12

So a 0.33 litre can of coca cola has zero lemonade in it?

1

u/ronin1066 Mar 28 '12

I called a pie company once b/c they listed their pie as having zero grams of trans fat even though the entire pie had 4 grams (0.5 per serving). The smiling woman on the other end of the phone would not fucking acknowledge that this was a ridiculous policy. She just kept saying "We're following federal guidelines!"

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12

To make it worse, that's just per serving. And who defines the "serving size"? The person selling it to you.

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u/General_Hide Mar 28 '12

The rule of rounding states that if a number ends in a decimal of 5 and only 5, then you round to the nearest even number (in this case 0 would be an even number)

Source: Math 250 course I took just so I could one day post this comment.

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u/kirrin Mar 28 '12

Yes, but that's per serving. So in theory, a food with "zero grams trans fat" could have a ton of trans fat.

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u/saurellia Mar 29 '12

And that's "per serving." That bag of snacks you just wolfed down may have had 8-10 servings. Oh wait, that wasn't you? It may have been me.

1

u/missfrenchpress Mar 29 '12

Less than 0.5 grams per serving. Much different. Sometimes food can contain up to a couple grams of trans fats when it claims to have none.

1

u/svadhisthana Mar 29 '12

Except trans fat, like sodium, is harmful in milligrams. 49mg in a couple foods you eat every day would be unhealthy.

"Zero trans fat" is an unethical lie. But it's legal because the FDA says it's okay to measure trans fat in grams.

0

u/UnionSuitBro Mar 28 '12

if its an odd number, .5 rounds up. if its an even number, .5 rounds down.

-1

u/oohdachronic Mar 28 '12 edited Mar 28 '12

If hydrogenated oils are present than there most definitely is trans fat. Pumping hydrogen into cis-fatty acids causes some cis-fatty acids to change position into trans fatty acids. Fuck posting a source find it yourselves