I think you’re right on the money here - and even the word ‘portion’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘complete meal’ - we’re told to eat five portions of fruit and/or veg a day, for example.
Bolding mine.
So it all boils down to Uncle Sam having no clued how much food people actually eat. Where do you conduct a survey that tells you that the average person only eats 2/3 of a pickle spear, or drinks 40% of a bottle of juice on a given “eating occasion”? No matter where the regulation comes from, it still seems to be a case of remarkable ignorance.
It’s marketing. They pick a calorie/fat gram number that’s palatable to consumers and make that the portion. If they’re going to regulate the nutritional information, they need to regulate the portions/servings as well.
And while they’re at it, let’s make packaged foods and restaurant portions a little more in line with each other, m’kay? At the grocery store, I wouldn’t get enough nourishment from a serving to propel myself to the parking lot. But when I go to the restaurant, they give me enough food to feed a family of four for a week. What the fuck is that?
Brian Regan: “The serving size for fig newtons- two cookies! Who the hell eats two fig newtons? I eat them by the sleeve!”
I guess I’m getting to healthier eating habits because I not only buy those packs where they’re separated out by serving, but I can eat 2 fig newtons as a snack and not be hungry afterward until the appointed meal time a few hours afterward. They may be small, but they’re really dense.
I also filled myself to almost disgusted on two of those Sara Lee mini cream puffs. They’re good, but man, are they rich!
I rarely, however, do the exact serving sizes recommended on boxes of food. Generally, if I’m going to have soup, that will be my whole meal if it’s coming from a can. I’m not gonna make a family size lasagna and eat it all in one sitting, though; I don’t think I could finish one of those in less than four or five sittings if I was the only person eating it.
My favorite was a Korean noodle bowl. Serving size: 2/3 of a bowl. Servings per container: approx. 1. :rolleyes: The fat was already sky high, but add 30% more to what the bowl said, and yikes!
Honestly, yes it’s marketing since companies want people to just look at the nutrition information without looking at how many servings are in there. But also, come on, a lot of people DO overeat (hence why there are so many overweight and obese people in the US). I know many people who will buy a big bag* of Doritos and get, what?, 3-5 ‘portions’ before the bag is gone?
The problem is that even when you’re trying to be good, eating a bit more here and a bit more there can really easily add up to a few hundred calories more than you need.
I think that they should make the serving sizes a bit more honest, though. Either put the whole package (for microwave dinners, etc) as just 1 serving (and show the true nutrition data), or make smaller packages if that serving is really all you ‘should’ eat.
- as in the ones you can get at the store, not the vending machine snacking ones.
I often find that the serving size on the package is about right for me, usually because I don’t just eat one serving of food like soup by itself. In general, the serving size is enough for me to enjoy the food before it stops tasting as good as it did when I took the first bite. In other words, I’ll have a single serving of soup with a salad and both items taste really good throughout instead of having a whole can of soup, which would eventually stop tasting as good, but I’d finish it anyway just because it was there.
But I agree, if you’re just going to eat a single serving of one food like chips or soup, it’s not going to be enough to fill you up for a meal, but may carry you through to your next one.
Whoah, where do you find food that has less calories than it has grams?!? :dubious:
Yeah, it’s rare. Generally in food that have high water content, such as fruit. But I’ve actually seen some TV dinners with less calories than grams, but just barely. They’re out there.
Lean Cuisine Spa dinners typically have a 1:1 or less calorie:weight ratio. I particularly like their Wild Salmon with Basil (nutritional info in link). There are other frozen dinners which have fewer calories than grams, though they are few and far between.
Once you finish getting your panties wadded up over our ridiculous labels. Go see how many cups your coffee pot actually holds.
Oh, I know, in your world, when something says 6 cups, you are thinking it’s a standard unit of measure (heretofore referred to as a cup) but in the world of coffee pots, a cup size is an arbitrary amount set by the manufacturer.
CITE:
In my world, I’m now going to random declare that a gallon is now equal to 12 oz and that a pint is 64oz.
My wife went all nuts on a Home Depot lumber yard guy once because (a) we had a gap in the floorboard of our house somewhere that was exactly two inches by four inches, and (b) their “two by four” piece of wood were not, in fact, 2 inches by four inches, but were somewhat smaller on both sides. She looked for a guy to complain to, then yelled that he was full of crap when he said that this was “industry standard”, and “due to shrinking”. Hoo boy.
And as for a “serving size”, I’ve always assumed it often represents what might be called a “sampling size”. It’s a convenient amount for nutritional composition testing: big enough to be meaningful (i.e., more than a smidgen-like 1g of beef), but small enough to accomodate whatever equipment is involved (i.e., not a 16-oz. strip steak).
I’ve long suspected that It Would All Make Sense if you could figure out what the equipment looked like, based on the the relative volume of some of these sample sizes across similar categories.
On the other hand, things that come in clearly discrete production units (like a package of hot dogs, containing 10) will always have a serving size equivalent to one hot dog, because who’s going to cut up 2/3 of a hot dog for measuring purposes?
Okay, I just made a can of tomato soup and gave myself one recommended serving with 7 crackers (exceeding the suggested number of 5, because I was fucking hungry). I immediately had to go back and fix a second serving, raising my 160 calorie lunch to 320 calories. I hate them. All of them.
Clearly he didn’t explain it well, but typically 2x4 are cut down from 2x12, and the blade removes a piece, leaving a gap called a “kerf,” which is a bit more than the width of the blade that did the cutting. (this should be obvious if you’ve ever cut wood). Each resulting 2x4 is smaller on each side by 1/2 the width of the kerf. Once upon a time I had a chart that gave the exact measurements of various standard lumber. You can get lumber cut true to size, but not at Home Depot. Its a special order because from a 2x12 the cutter ends up with 2 2x4 plus a useless and barely salable wierd sized piece instead of 3 equal pieces known commonly as “2x4”.
Back to the subject… Serving sizes (and the Nutrition Facts label) were standardized by the Nutrition Legislation and Enforcement Act (NLEA) of 1990. You can read it in full here:
http://www.fda.gov/ora/inspect_ref/igs/nleatxt.html
The serving sizes were established with reference to consumer surveys on food consumption that took place in the 70s & 80s and are not arbitrary (or set by the manufacturer) but rather standardized based on “customary use.”
For example, within the category BAKERY PRODUCTS, which includes
Biscuits, croissants, bagels, tortillas, soft bread sticks, soft pretzels. corn bread, and hush puppies, the statutory serving size is 55g
Priot to NLEA, manufacturers set their own serving size and those of us old enough can recall what a clusterfuck that was. Entire products (Kellogg Granola, I’m looking at you) were taken off the market after NLEA because in the customary use at statutory serving size (ie as breakfast cereal) the calories were astronomical.
NLEA also defined “Light” “Low fat” “Low sodium” and other formerly dubious descriptive marketing labels.
I survive on Ramen noodles. Each package offers absolutely no nutritional value. I was surprised when I read that there were two servings in each package! Who’s eating half of a Ramen, anyways? I mean, if you’re health-conscious, you’re not going to buy them in the first place. You’d have to be demented to put half of a Ramen “meal” in the fridge for later. I shiver to think how a re-heated Ramen would taste…
I really don’t think anyone is saying a lunch should only have 160 calories. The general idea is that you’d have soup with some salad, maybe a slice of buttered/olive oiled bread and some fruit.
You don’t make it all at once. You crack the brick of noodles at the fold, so you have two halves, then save one half, and half the powder for later. Yes, I am speaking from experience.
What I found interesting was the info on a loaf of bread I bought earlier this week: it had two sets of numbers, separated by commas. The first was for a single slice of bread, and the second for 3 slices.
Apparently, this is a bread you should use for open-faced and double-decked sandwiches, but not everyday, 2-slices-of-bread sandwiches.
Reading labels is for wimps. Just wolf down the damn food and belch like God intended.
I love frozen dinners that say “2 servings per package.” Heat it all and eat it all is my motto.
I always figure out the total calories, and I think that’s how they should be listed. A pint of Ben & Jerry’s–1200 calories.