Annoyance: Deceptive Serving Sizes
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Spreyton22K wrote: »Just a shout out to the fellow Aussies on this thread - does the use of kilojoules in preference to calories on the packet throw you much?
....I must admit if they do use Kj instead of calories I find that a bit extra frustrating in working out amounts....
Quite a lot of packaging is now adding calories in brackets under the kilojoules. Otherwise, I just use a unit converter on my computer.
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Spreyton22K wrote: »Just a shout out to the fellow Aussies on this thread - does the use of kilojoules in preference to calories on the packet throw you much?
....I must admit if they do use Kj instead of calories I find that a bit extra frustrating in working out amounts....
Kiwi here, I log in kilojoules, so it doesn't bother me.0 -
Why can't you just use kilojoules? MFP does kilojoules and our entire country does too...bizarre! (Kiwi here). Most of the world officially uses kilojoules. You don't need to change to kcal to log.0
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My problem is when something only tells you the calories per 100g then doesn't tell you how much the whole thing weighs, the wraps I like do this so I had to scan it with the mfp app in the shop to see if they were worth buying. What's the point in that!0
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Serving sizes are confusing...and arbitrary...Sometimes the "serving" is too big, sometimes too small...Read labels carefully
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Spreyton22K wrote: »Just a shout out to the fellow Aussies on this thread - does the use of kilojoules in preference to calories on the packet throw you much?
....I must admit if they do use Kj instead of calories I find that a bit extra frustrating in working out amounts....
I just divide by 4. It's not spot on, but it's close enough to make a guess at whether it's worth it or not.0 -
Reading is fundamental.0
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Yes, certainly reading is fundamental
I would find it easier though if there was one standard of counting/labeling for portion sizes, also here we have the 'traffic light' measurement too on some packaging and for me that just confuses me all the more.
First World problem....I suppose,
....but I am surprised by how difficult manufacturer's seem to be determined to make it. You have to be pretty motivated to unravel the numbers, the small print and any confusion about what the is actually a serving size.0 -
Spreyton22K wrote: »^^^^ Merkavar you could try singing "Pass the Choccy on the left hand side......"
Ew....to everything about the Heart Attack Grill. There seems to be quite a few fatalities linked with this business....I guess each to their own but Oh My.....8,000 calories for a burger and endless chips.
How about
99 cartons of chocolate milk in the wall
99 cartons of chocolate milk
Take one down pass it around
98 cartons of chocolate milk in the wall0 -
^^^^Ooh yes I like that one.....
Except I may need help with the complicated counting......seeing that I come from Tassie and all
.....might have to engage the 2nd head or get a kissing Cousin to help me. lol 0 -
My pet peeve is why so few place carry individual serving potato chips - 1 oz, a serving is one oz. Even the packages they sell acknowledge that there are 1.6, 2, 3, 5 servings in a package. And why is everything FAMILY sized? As if that is laudable. My family consists of 1 person. Me.0
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Spreyton22K wrote: »^^^^Ooh yes I like that one.....
Except I may need help with the complicated counting......seeing that I come from Tassie and all
.....might have to engage the 2nd head or get a kissing Cousin to help me. lol
I'm sure you could count a lot higher than most using your fingers and toes, extra digits and all.
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I'm in the UK and most packaging gives the nutritional information per serving and per 100g on the back. However, on the front, the highlights are given per serving. We use a broad traffic light system and, as others have mentioned, through clever tricks a serving can end up in the green/amber range when looking at the values per 100g it should really be put it in the amber/red range.
Sometimes I'm glad the OH doesn't do the food shop with me, he would get way too frustrated with how long I take to look at the back of everything new.0 -
Well they made serving sizes smaller... They didn't change the packaging. Often they made packets smaller and prices even higher. The serving stuff is BS.0
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Spreyton22K wrote: »^^^^Ooh yes I like that one.....
Except I may need help with the complicated counting......seeing that I come from Tassie and all
.....might have to engage the 2nd head or get a kissing Cousin to help me. lol
I'm sure you could count a lot higher than most using your fingers and toes, extra digits and all.
Oooh.....you cheeky sausage - He shoots, he scores. Another blow for the inhabitants of the forgotten State.
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Spreyton22K wrote: »Just a shout out to the fellow Aussies on this thread - does the use of kilojoules in preference to calories on the packet throw you much?
....I must admit if they do use Kj instead of calories I find that a bit extra frustrating in working out amounts....
Quite a lot of packaging is now adding calories in brackets under the kilojoules. Otherwise, I just use a unit converter on my computer.
I count in calories (I'm Aussie too) and if there isn't calories on the packaging just kilojoules divide it by 4.2 to get the calories. I often find myself calculating in store for foods. Biscuits aren't the best food choice.0 -
Here in Germany, most things are stated per 100g, and sometimes per serving as well. You still have to do the math (or let MFP do it) but that's fine.
What bothers me the most is how they try to hide the actual "problem" with a food by boasting about how healthy it is otherwise. For example they write a big fat "SUGAR-FREE" on the packaging when it's a food where the biggest "problem" isn't the sugar but the fat.0 -
Serving sizes have been a pet peeve of mine for years. I think they are getting a bit better than they were, but still not great.
I have had to correct food information in the food database here on a few occasions because someone entered a package of something as 1 serving when it is actually 2.
Most recently for me ... I'm standing in the yogurt section checking out calories on the yogurts. All are the same size or pretty close to it ... what I would consider 1 serving. But my favourite yogurt is, for some unknown reason, 2 servings and therefore the calorie content doubles making it the highest calorie yogurt on the shelf.
Yogurt! I must admit I only have Forme yogurt now because normal yogurts are much higher calorie. 150grams >73 calories as an example(Which works out to 486 for a kilo tub). I think it just has less sugar in it or something. Still yogurt just with less of the 'extras'.0 -
not sure why food labels and serving sizes are an issue to be frank. What about bulk items that don't have labels? or fresh food? like cherries?
I as an adult get to decide what my serving size is and calculate the calories based on that.
My crackers come in a sleeve...5 is a serving size...can't reseal that either so I put it in a sealed bag...
ETA: if people are wanting to lose weight why wouldn't they automatically look at serving sizes on packages...?????
Just wondering.
However I do agree that food manufacturers should be making a better effort with "normal" serving sizes on their packaging.0 -
Yeah, I noticed that my first go round with calorie counting. I found it laughable. Just carefully read the label and add up however many servings you're going to eat; call it your reading and math for the day.0
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47Jacqueline wrote: »My pet peeve is why so few place carry individual serving potato chips - 1 oz, a serving is one oz. Even the packages they sell acknowledge that there are 1.6, 2, 3, 5 servings in a package. And why is everything FAMILY sized? As if that is laudable. My family consists of 1 person. Me.
Trader Joe's does. They have their potato chips in individual serving bags.
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Spreyton22K wrote: »Just a shout out to the fellow Aussies on this thread - does the use of kilojoules in preference to calories on the packet throw you much?
....I must admit if they do use Kj instead of calories I find that a bit extra frustrating in working out amounts....
I just do a quick divide by 4 and I've got an approximation of the calories. Then when I log it, I get an exact amount.
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UltimateRBF wrote: »The only one that ever annoys me is the Pop Tart one. Ever tried only eating one Pop Tart and saving the other one for later? You can't. It goes stale if you try to keep it in its wrapper after it's been opened.
Actually, I have done this when I've eaten poptarts as an evening snack ... one poptart on one day, the other on the next day.
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UltimateRBF wrote: »The only one that ever annoys me is the Pop Tart one. Ever tried only eating one Pop Tart and saving the other one for later? You can't. It goes stale if you try to keep it in its wrapper after it's been opened.
Well....you could put that other Pop Tart in a small ziplock bag so it would stay fresh. Just saying....
I agree though about some labeling. My eye-opener was years ago with canned soup. I could easily eat the whole can of soup at once, especially if I wasn't having anything else with it. Surprise, the can was 2 servings not 1. Now it's second-nature for me to read labels but back then it wasn't. There are also things in cans that have things like 2.5 servings listed. Yeah, I wish they would all just use 100 grams. But until we have a standard that will never happen.0 -
DoNotSpamMe73 wrote: »Serving sizes have been a pet peeve of mine for years. I think they are getting a bit better than they were, but still not great.
I have had to correct food information in the food database here on a few occasions because someone entered a package of something as 1 serving when it is actually 2.
Most recently for me ... I'm standing in the yogurt section checking out calories on the yogurts. All are the same size or pretty close to it ... what I would consider 1 serving. But my favourite yogurt is, for some unknown reason, 2 servings and therefore the calorie content doubles making it the highest calorie yogurt on the shelf.
Yogurt! I must admit I only have Forme yogurt now because normal yogurts are much higher calorie. 150grams >73 calories as an example(Which works out to 486 for a kilo tub). I think it just has less sugar in it or something. Still yogurt just with less of the 'extras'.
Normally I have one particular brand (the name of which escapes me at the moment because I haven't had it in about a month) which works out to about 60 cal for every 150 grams.
But I'm out of it, and was trying to find something comparable at a Salamanca Fresh market. I ended up with something that worked out to 143 cal for 150 grams, which was the lowest cal stuff on the shelf. But I had to read the labels of all the choices, and was rather disappointed to discover that my favourite choice (Jalna) is listed as a double serving.
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Spreyton22K wrote: »Yes, certainly reading is fundamental
I would find it easier though if there was one standard of counting/labeling for portion sizes, also here we have the 'traffic light' measurement too on some packaging and for me that just confuses me all the more.
First World problem....I suppose,
....but I am surprised by how difficult manufacturer's seem to be determined to make it. You have to be pretty motivated to unravel the numbers, the small print and any confusion about what the is actually a serving size.
How much motivation does this take?
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The other day a customer pointed out to me that an ice cream we sell at my store has its portion size stated by a drawing of a spoon. I had to do some quick maths for her based on the actual values they gave and the size of the tub because, quite rightly, she couldn't work with the drawing of a spoon!0
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Boil in bag rice... 3 bags but 5 total servings. WTF.
I also hate ridiculously small serving sizes so they can say 0 calories or whatever. Logging 50g of Splenda in a recipe is a PITA just to find an accurate entry...
And of course the good old oil sprays with 1/3 of a second spray serving sizes. I'm sure most people use 20 calories of oil there.0 -
*Shrugs*
I eat one pop tart. I put the other one in a zip lock bag so it doesn't go stale. I must be a frickin' genius.
Further proof of my genius: I eat one pop tart because I know that that is the serving size because I read.
This, always:DeguelloTex wrote: »Reading is fundamental.
That's not to say that I've never eaten a pre-packaged food, only to realize that the one package was two (or three!) servings. But when that's happened I don't whine and blame the food companies. I blame myself for being lazy and not reading.
I tend to take responsibility for my own actions. The information is right there in plain sight. If I don't use it, it's no one's fault but my own.
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Yes, it would be nice if they were just honest and up-front about it. Agreed.Yes, they lie big and tell the truth in very small print. Yes, it's annoying. I'm not even sure why they do it. Lying about the calories will not entice anyone who actually cares about them. People who care will read the label.
Most people who are eating King Sized candy bars do not really care about how many calories they're taking in. They could put "5000 Calories!" on the front of the package and people would still buy them and eat them.
That heart Attack restaurant ADVERTISES that the things are terrible for you. They have had two mascot-spokesmen who died. People lined up to get in.
McDonald's has the calories on the menu. I haven't heard one person say, "Wow! I sure was surprised about those calories! I'm not going to eat that now!"
They're so ridiculous, wasting time and money lying about the calories. All they do is get people who care to not trust them. They should just be honest.
Well, reasonably accurate calorie counts help people who are trying to watch them .
And people definitely are surprised by amounts once they start
they are on the package…how much more "honest" do you want them to be…
I am sorry if OP did not correctly read the package, but no amount of regulation is going to solve that.0
This discussion has been closed.
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