The way most food manufacturers obtain the nutrient amount per serve of each product is to send their product to a testing facility. The facility tests the protein, carb, sugar and fat levels and provides the manufacturer with the test results. Each nutrient test costs $5 – $20 dollars for each product. So to test a product for 30+ nutrients rather than just the basic 10 is obviously way more expensive. The cost and lack of demand is why most manufacturers do not do what I do.
So the way I create my formulations is to firstly enter all ingredients into a spreadsheet with the nutritional information (amount of protein, carb, fat, vitamin and mineral content per 100 grams) I can find on each ingredient. Then, for each ingredient in the recipe, I enter the amount in grams. The spreadsheet sums the amount of each vitamin and mineral for each ingredient to give me the total of each nutrient for the batch. I then divide the nutrient amount in the batch total by the number of serves to get the nutrient amount per serve.
The advantage of doing the work to compile the nutrient table for each ingredient is firstly that it saves me a lot of money for each product (for instance for me to pay to have commercially tested the 30 plus nutrients in one product would be about $300. Multiply that by the 50 odd products I make and you are looking at a $15,000 testing bill) and secondly that whenever I need to alter a recipe (product unavailability or adding a new ingredient) I can alter my nutrient panel on the fly without the cost or time delay involved in sending samples off and waiting for the results to come back.
Once I have the first draft of a recipe I start the tweaking process to build the nutrient content to the required level I have set for that product. So, if I want the Bug Out Bar to deliver 25% of the daily nutrient requirements I adjust up the amount of ingredients flagged as highest in those nutrients under 25%. For some nutrients, like B12, it simply means increasing the amount of Blue Green Klamath. For some nutrients, most commonly Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium it is hard to get to the required amount of a vitamin or mineral without adding some of that specific nutrient. That is why those are three of the top four ingredients in my NutriBlast powder. Because without adding them as minerals I cannot deliver to you what the body needs.