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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?

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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.

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  • 1
    aaaagggh! I CAN'T believe I missed that.
    – Joe
    Nov 8, 2020 at 8:02
  • 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 8, 2020 at 10:03
  • One product is called 'custard powder', the other 'corn flour', at least in the photos shown here.
    – Willeke
    Nov 8, 2020 at 12:07
  • 1
    @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 8, 2020 at 12:40
  • 2
    @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 8, 2020 at 12:56

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