As I sit here at work on a Saturday…on a holiday weekend…working on a government proposal, I just went and grabbed a Snickers from the vending machine. Said Snickers is a ‘Big one’ that is slightly larger than the normal candy bar and advertises that it is 170 calories. But read further on and that is ‘per serving’ because apparently this candy bar is ‘3 servings’.
That seems idiotic to me, because who EVER eats 1/3 of a candy bar?
That said, it got me wondering…are there any standards for ‘serving size’?
If not, can I start producing slices of super rich chocolate cake with a giant sticker on them that says “Only 5 calories per serving!” with a small note on the side stating that this slice of cake represents 500 servings? Or is that still some kind of false advertising?
I’ve seen similar things. Or they stick on a sticker saying “25% less fat!” and just increase the number of servings. And I’m not a lawyer or anything, but I think they’re just required to label what’s in the serving, though there may be some kinda “reasonable and customary” clause. But yea, serving sizes are fun. I’ve seen 20oz sodas with 120 calories per serving and something like 3.7 servings per bottle.
As TWDuke’s site states, the intention was that serving sizes would be uniform across industries and that sizes better reflected actual servings consumed by normal eaters.
The reality has been very different as companies increasingly find loopholes and tricks to make their numbers look better.
I recently found a brand of cereal that came in a regular and a lean version. The lean version looked great until I realized that the serving size for the regular version was 1 cup, but the serving size for the lean version was 1/2 cup. When I multiplied the latter set of numbers by two, the cereals were essentially identical.
The pop example is especially egregious because one of the specific reasons that the new serving size policy was put into place was to stop the practice of splitting cans or bottles into multiple servings, since they are never drunk that way.
Serving size is one tiny piece of the labeling issues that the FDA faces. Various groups are demanding the inclusion of percentages not given now (such as trans fats or lactose), forcing manufacturers to bold or otherwise indicate the presence of potential allergens in ingredients, and making the entire label easier to understand. The pressure is building but it will be a long time before any meaningful steps are taken.
The OP and TWDuke’s link refer to serving sizes for nutritional information. But what about if you just want to work out how many people it will feed? Are there any rules as to how the manufacturer must calculate “serves x”?
My wife and I ate a pasta for 10 the other night. 10 what, I don’t know, but that is what the packet said. And no, we are not behemoths - we weigh 320 lbs between us.
I don’t know if this is particularly related, but Diet Coke does a similar thing as that cereal. They advertise the soda as having “one (or is it zero?) calorie(s)”, but the servings per 12 oz. container are two.