The only number most people actually read on a panel, and the one most easily got wrong. Two minutes of division settles it.
A % Daily Value is one division: the amount in a serving, divided by the FDA's published Daily Value for that nutrient, times a hundred. The FDA publishes the whole table free on its own site. Running the check on our own product's panel found four of seven printed percentages did not match: folate printed as 100% is 250%, vitamin B12 printed as 100% is 83%, vitamin B6 printed as 88% is 82%, and added sugars printed as 6% is 8%.
A % Daily Value is not an opinion, a rating or a measure of quality. It is a single division, and knowing that makes the whole column readable.
The FDA publishes a Daily Value for each nutrient: a reference amount for adults and children aged four and over, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. Folate is 400 micrograms of dietary folate equivalents. Vitamin B12 is 2.4 micrograms. Vitamin B6 is 1.7 milligrams. Iodine is 150 micrograms. Added sugars are 50 grams. Sodium is 2,300 milligrams.
Take the amount printed on the panel, divide it by that figure, multiply by a hundred, and you have the percentage. That is the whole calculation.
It is worth doing because a percentage is usually the only number on a panel that people read carefully, and because getting it right is entirely mechanical. A mismatch does not prove anything sinister. It does tell you how carefully the rest of the label was checked.
Two minutes, a phone, and no expertise required.
It is a free public page on fda.gov, listing every nutrient with its Daily Value and its unit. Bookmark it; you will use it more than you expect.
Match the units first. If the panel says micrograms and the table says micrograms, you are fine. If one says DFE and the other does not, read the fine print, because folate is measured in dietary folate equivalents and folic acid is not.
Round to the nearest whole number. A one-point difference is rounding. A difference of a factor of two or more is not, and it is worth knowing about before you decide how much of the product to take.
Seven rows, seven divisions, two matches.
| Line | Amount | Printed | The division | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Folate | 1,000 mcg DFE | 100% | 1,000 ÷ 400 | 250% |
| Vitamin B12 | 2 mcg | 100% | 2 ÷ 2.4 | 83% |
| Vitamin B6 | 1.4 mg | 88% | 1.4 ÷ 1.7 | 82% |
| Iodine | 100 mcg | 67% | 100 ÷ 150 | 67% — correct |
| Added Sugars | 4 g | 6% | 4 ÷ 50 | 8% |
| Total Carbohydrate | 5.7 g | <2% | 5.7 ÷ 275 | 2.1% |
| Sodium | 5.6 mg | <1% | 5.6 ÷ 2,300 | 0.24% — correct |
We are not alleging bad faith, and we cannot explain it. What we can say is that the amounts themselves are the thing to read, and that the folate row is the one with a practical consequence.
Three of the four mismatches are academic. Eighty-three per cent against a printed hundred, or eighty-two against eighty-eight, changes nothing about how you would take the product.
The folate row does. The panel prints 1,000 micrograms DFE at 100% of the Daily Value. The true figure against the FDA's 400 microgram DFE reference is 250%.
That matters because folate has an upper limit and the others on this panel largely do not. The NIH sets a tolerable upper intake level of 1,000 micrograms a day of folic acid from supplements and fortified foods, and this product carries 600 micrograms of folic acid in one serving.
So one serving is 60% of that limit. A reader who sees 100% of the Daily Value has no way to infer that, and might reasonably conclude that adding a multivitamin or a B-complex is unremarkable. Two servings plus a fortified cereal takes you past the limit without anything on the jar suggesting caution.
None of this is dangerous at one serving a day. All of it is a reason to treat the recommended dose as a maximum, and a reason to run this check on any label carrying a nutrient with an upper limit attached.
The ones with a tolerable upper intake level: folic acid, vitamin A as retinol, vitamin D, vitamin E, niacin, vitamin B6, iodine, selenium, zinc, iron and calcium. For those, the percentage is doing real work and getting it wrong has consequences.
JellyRock Premium Formula is an apple cider vinegar gummy: 1,000 mg of vinegar complex, four vitamins and minerals, and two botanicals at eighty micrograms each. Every amount is printed, and we publish the awkward ones as plainly as the rest.
Order NowRead the label firstPlaces where the check goes wrong even when you do it properly.
Dietary folate equivalents, not micrograms of folic acid. The conversion is 1 mcg DFE equals 0.6 mcg of folic acid taken with food, so 600 mcg of folic acid is 1,000 mcg DFE. Compare like with like or the answer is nonsense.
The FDA updated the table in 2016 and products had years to comply. A label calculated against the old figures will disagree with the current table, and that is a different problem from an arithmetic error.
A panel printing <2% may be rounding honestly or may be understating. Run the division yourself and you will know which.
The obvious question about this post is why a site that earns a commission on JellyRock would publish a table showing that four of its panel's percentages are wrong.
The short answer is that the check is public. The FDA's table is free, the divisions are arithmetic, and anybody who reads this article can run them in two minutes. A fact that a reader can verify independently is not a fact worth hiding, and a site that hid it would be worth nothing once someone noticed.
The longer answer is that this is the kind of thing we would want to know as a buyer. It does not make the product dangerous, it does not mean the amounts are wrong, and it is genuinely relevant to whether you add a multivitamin on top.
And it is worth saying what the check also found: two rows are correct, and the iodine row in particular is right in a way that shows the arithmetic was done somewhere. Publishing the failures without the passes would be its own kind of dishonesty.
Whether you need the nutrient, whether it is absorbed in the form given, or whether more is better. A Daily Value is a population reference, not a prescription for you, and a large percentage on a nutrient with a tiny reference value is arithmetic rather than achievement.
A Daily Value tells you what a population needs. A tolerable upper intake level tells you where the evidence of harm begins, and the two are different numbers with different purposes.
The NIH publishes upper limits for the nutrients where enough evidence exists to set one. They are not cliff edges and exceeding one occasionally is not an emergency; they are the point above which routine daily intake is no longer considered safe for the general population.
Folic acid's limit exists for a specific reason. High folic acid intake can correct the anaemia caused by a vitamin B12 deficiency while the neurological damage that deficiency causes continues unaddressed. The limit is there to protect the diagnostic signal, not because folic acid is toxic.
Iodine's exists for a different reason: excess iodine inhibits thyroid hormone synthesis, which can produce goitre, and iodine-induced hyperthyroidism can result from high intakes.
Knowing why a limit exists is more useful than knowing the number, because it tells you who should care. The folic acid limit matters most to anyone who might have a B12 absorption problem. The iodine limit matters most to anyone with a thyroid condition.
