I’m not talking about a large package that contains a bulk amount of a food. Like a ‘party size’ bag of chips that contains a pound or more of potato chips or a bag of frozen fish fillets that has a dozen fillets inside.
I’m also not thinking about stuff that is a single item physically but that has markings/indications so that they can be broken down easily, Like a KitKat bar or even the traditional Hershey bar with grooves to snap it into 8 subpieces.
I’m thinking of foods that are a single wrapper/package that contain multiple physically separate items, and which the verbiage on that package says there are two (or whatever) servings but those items are not separately wrapped in an way.
For example, Twinkies, Mounds or Almond Joy candy bars, Pop Tarts.
My thinking is that such packages are just cynical marketing, designed to make the buyer feel better about the price (Well, it’s only $1 a serving,) or the calories (Hey, only 100 calories for a serving, wahoo!) while knowing full well that the buyer will generally eat the entire package…unless maybe they’re with someone and feel ‘obliged’ to share with them.
But maybe I’m just unusually lacking in self control.
How do you generally behave when faced with one of these pseudo multipacks?
Of course I eat both Twinkies right away!
It says each Pop Tart is a serving so I only eat one. What am I, a greedy hog?
Not to fight the hypothetical, and not to defend crap food, but Pop Tarts and Twinkies actually DO count a serving as two portions (tarts and cakes). Almond Joy lists for the package.
Labels are supposed to list the information for serving based on what most consumers actually do eat as a serving, and for packages that still could be multiplied servings snarfed down, also list the information for the complete package (say like a pint container of ice cream).
Mounds is the one on your list that defines a serving as two pieces while the package contains five pieces. But it does list the information for the whole package as well, which likely is what most eat once they open the package up.
I eat what I want, typically the whole pack unless it is very obviously not intended to be eaten in one sitting. I also count my calories on and off so I will enter the appropriate amount into my tracking app. I find it mildly annoying that the (delicious) packets of cashews I get given as part of my meal at work is 1.5 servings rather than just 1 with 1.5 times the calories.
One Pop-Tart is a junk food craving I’ll occasionally indulge. Two is an overload that makes me feel lousy all day. Twinkies are an abomination before God, but when I used to eat Hostess cupcakes, I’d usually eat both if I didn’t have anyone to share with, just because they get stale once opened
There are times when I eat only one of the Pop Tarts in the package.
Those times ALL involve having opened two other packages beforehand and eaten their contents. Sometimes I just can’t handle six, so I stop at five. I don’t want to be a glutton, y’know.
What always got me is the cheap bricks of ramen noodles that say ‘2 servings’. What am I supposed to do, break the noodle brick in half? Or save half of the cooked noodles for later, to turn into a soggy mess? I suppose you could share with somebody, but I would venture to guess that nobody making ramen alone in the history of ramen bricks has ever not consumed the whole thing at a sitting.
Totally agree. The entire concept of “a serving” just boggles my mind with it’s ass-backwardness. It’s as if, here in the US at least, they decided “well, we’re already so messed up between ounces and grams we might as well add a unit that varies by product to further obfuscate what could be simple and informative.”
Calorie counting as a strategy is IMHO an inferior approach to nutrition than focusing on eating quality foods and listening to when our bodies message they are no longer hungry. But again the law in the United States, apparently not well enforced, is that label serving size should reflect what consumers typically actually eat of the product.
I don’t know if most people actually eat a whole package of ramen by themselves or not, but at least for those who choose to eat those packages and count calories the amount of calories (and sodium and saturated fat, and relative lack of protein or fiber …) that the whole package contains is also listed.
You think listing by ounces or grams would be more useful??
Yes ultraprocessed packaged food is easy to absurd amounts of, and many of us do.
I used to laugh at the concept that a pint container of ice cream is two servings, as I would always eat the whole container at a single time. Now with my lactose intolerance even with taking lactaid I can’t eat more than half a container at a time. So I no longer toss the lid, but reclose the container and put it back in the freezer.
They’re already both listed, I just have to do some very simple math to determine the unit rates. But yes, wouldn’t life be simpler if (we Americans) just got on with it and learned to look at some food and have an approximate idea of how many grams we see? The package labels would be about half the size and way easier to understand.
Is that true? Where do food manufacturers and their regulators get that data? I totally buy your point that wise consumers should eat far less of most products than they do, but those serving sizes sure don’t look like what any consumers I’m acquainted with actually eat.
Even people who think they are good at that usually are not. And people already can’t be arsed to even grok that a package that contains two labeled servings has twice what one labeled serving is …