I was reading my bag of “smart” popcorn which basically means less fat as I am sure many of us know. I looked at the nutrition facts and found that my “smart” popcorn contained 110 calories and 5g of fat per 2 tbsp. serving. At closer inspection I found out that that meant “unpopped” and when popped it had 20 calories and 1g of fat per 1 cup. Now why the heck does the popcorn have an unpopped reading on it? Who eats the unpopped popcorn?
Mine lists both too. I’m sure that 2 tbsp yields more (a lot more) than a cup of popped, but I agree that few people eat it unpopped.
That way, you can measure it out before popping it, and have a close idea of the after-popping nutrients (minus evaporation, etc.).
It may be what panache45 said. However, I don’t know of many people who actually take the popcorn out of the bag to pop it. It’s more common just to microwave the popcorn in the sealed bag. Of course, there are other ways to make popcorn, and if you wanted, you could measure out unpopped kernels to your liking and pop them in a more traditional way. That may be a better use of resources if you only want a little popcorn, e.g. for nutritional reasons.
I know this is GQ, which means that factual answers are preferred over WAGs, but a WAG is all I have: I’m supposing that, by law, the manufacturers are required to post the fat content of the food (i.e., how much fat they actually put in there); in the case of most foods, the amount of fat is the amount of fat, but in the case of microwave popcorn, most of the fat actually stays in the bag, so you’re not consuming that fat unless you rip the bag open and lick it. Therefore, they have to list the “unpopped” numbers to satisfy government requirements for disclosure; they list the “popped” numbers so you know what you’re actually consuming.