Argh! misleading nutrition labels
Replies
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Strawblackcat wrote: »I don't understand why everyone throws such a fit over a can of soup being listed at having two servings. Growing up, my family always split a can of soup between at least two people. Sometimes three. I still always split a can with someone else when I eat soup.
That said, we always had something with the soup, like a salad or half sandwich or something. My parents always said that a can of soup had too much sodium for one person, so it was better if you shared it with someone else and ate something less salty with it. Maybe everyone else is just only eating soup, and nothing else? I don't know. This argument just confuses me.
Edit: Same deal with poptarts. Growing up in my famil, you were a pig if you are both poptarts in the foil pack. We always ate one and either gave the other to someone else or put it in a sandwich bag for later.
But what did you eat WITH the pop tart?
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LOL poor poor manicotti.... such a picture in my head, Hey who left me the stubs again?!?sheldonklein wrote: »I've been buying a prepared manicotti from Costco. According to the label, there are 7 servings in the package. There are 5 manicotti in the package. I guess I'm supposed to eat 5/7 of a manicotti and serve someone else the stubs.
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sheldonklein wrote: »I've been buying a prepared manicotti from Costco. According to the label, there are 7 servings in the package. There are 5 manicotti in the package. I guess I'm supposed to eat 5/7 of a manicotti and serve someone else the stubs.
And now all of the "fair division" things I had to learn in math come into play... Ha!
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I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?0
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sheldonklein wrote: »I've been buying a prepared manicotti from Costco. According to the label, there are 7 servings in the package. There are 5 manicotti in the package. I guess I'm supposed to eat 5/7 of a manicotti and serve someone else the stubs.
LMAO
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I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?
Generally, nutrition data refers to the edible portion of the item, I thought. I wonder if that was really meant to be the entire cob, or just the corn on it?
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I made a brownie package once. The listed serving size was 1/88th of a package. Made absolutely no sense to me then, but today I might just look by weight0
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sheldonklein wrote: »I've been buying a prepared manicotti from Costco. According to the label, there are 7 servings in the package. There are 5 manicotti in the package. I guess I'm supposed to eat 5/7 of a manicotti and serve someone else the stubs.
Feed the stubs to the homeless0 -
Or those Trader Joe's wraps that have 2 servings. Almost bought one until I realized that... ugh.
Or those waffles I love that not only state 8 servings in a package (4 waffles), but when you weigh them, each waffle is close to 3 servings. It's lovely how your 140 calories waffle turns into a 340 calories waffle.
So yeah... that's why I read labels and weigh everything now.0 -
Pandapotato wrote: »andrikosDE wrote: »Come on America, join the metric world, you can do it.
How would metrics change the fact that they are counting an individual sized bottle as two servings?
It would help in the following way:
If all nutrition labels were equalized to 100g (ml for fluids) you can now figure out in your head that:
chips are ~5-5.5 kcal per gram
nuts are 6-7 kcal per gram
lean meats are 1.2-1.4 kcal per gram
cereals are 3.5 kcal per gram
etc
etc
etc
It gives you a very good compass of what to expect rather than trying to bend your brain with all the asinine serving quantities.
What is a serving size?
YOU decide.0 -
I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?
Generally, nutrition data refers to the edible portion of the item, I thought. I wonder if that was really meant to be the entire cob, or just the corn on it?
You are correct @JaneiR36 . It's just for the edible portion.
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andrikosDE wrote: »Pandapotato wrote: »andrikosDE wrote: »Come on America, join the metric world, you can do it.
How would metrics change the fact that they are counting an individual sized bottle as two servings?
It would help in the following way:
If all nutrition labels were equalized to 100g (ml for fluids) you can now figure out in your head that:
chips are ~5-5.5 kcal per gram
nuts are 6-7 kcal per gram
lean meats are 1.2-1.4 kcal per gram
cereals are 3.5 kcal per gram
etc
etc
etc
It gives you a very good compass of what to expect rather than trying to bend your brain with all the asinine serving quantities.
What is a serving size?
YOU decide.
Great idea! We could implement that using 4 ounces rather than 100g
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The soup ones really bother me too, lol. But not the calories, the sodium content. On the label it says 33%. ok, not so bad since it will be one of my 3 meals for the day. But no, there are 2 servings in there which I will eat most of, so really...... 1580 mg of sodium, plus the saltine crackers that I'm going to eat with it?! yep.0
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I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?
Generally, nutrition data refers to the edible portion of the item, I thought. I wonder if that was really meant to be the entire cob, or just the corn on it?
It's just the corn. It does seem to have weird ideas of what a small, medium, and large ear is, based on my experience (and I get my corn from a local organic farm, so it shouldn't be supercorn, but this is corn country). 1 standard size cob in my experience (not one I would have said was "large") has about 130-150 grams of corn kernels on it.
Anyway, I'd never really looked at those estimates since I just weigh and use the calories per 100 gram numbers.
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andrikosDE wrote: »Pandapotato wrote: »andrikosDE wrote: »Come on America, join the metric world, you can do it.
How would metrics change the fact that they are counting an individual sized bottle as two servings?
It would help in the following way:
If all nutrition labels were equalized to 100g (ml for fluids) you can now figure out in your head that:
chips are ~5-5.5 kcal per gram
nuts are 6-7 kcal per gram
lean meats are 1.2-1.4 kcal per gram
cereals are 3.5 kcal per gram
etc
etc
etc
It gives you a very good compass of what to expect rather than trying to bend your brain with all the asinine serving quantities.
What is a serving size?
YOU decide.
This would be nice for people who weigh, but would be less useful than the normal: 1 serving=44 gram, servings per bag about 3.5 kind of thing, as that allows the more casual observer to see what a normal serving is supposed to be and estimate what their amount is.
I actually used to do that a lot (years ago, when I ate more packaged stuff and long before I did the weighing). I'd make a bag of beans and rice (6 servings per package), divide it into three servings and double the calorie amount. I'd even do the rough calculations before deciding what a reasonable amount was to eat. If I wasn't having anything else with it I might decide that 3 servings was fine (it was something like 160 calories per serving).
It would be ideal to have both options, which is what I think the UK does.0 -
andrikosDE wrote: »Pandapotato wrote: »andrikosDE wrote: »Come on America, join the metric world, you can do it.
How would metrics change the fact that they are counting an individual sized bottle as two servings?
It would help in the following way:
If all nutrition labels were equalized to 100g (ml for fluids) you can now figure out in your head that:
chips are ~5-5.5 kcal per gram
nuts are 6-7 kcal per gram
lean meats are 1.2-1.4 kcal per gram
cereals are 3.5 kcal per gram
etc
etc
etc
It gives you a very good compass of what to expect rather than trying to bend your brain with all the asinine serving quantities.
What is a serving size?
YOU decide.
First teach metric using governments to not label semi-solid foods (aka ice cream) and solid foods in water/juice (canned fruit and veggies) in mL. I went out and bought a #8 scoop just for ice cream.0 -
One good thing about US labels -- I've yet to see any ice cream/gelato/frozen yogurt that doesn't give gram numbers.0
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I get a kick out out of pizzas that say that 1/5 of a pizza is a serving.0
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I always thought 8 oz was a kinda standard beverage size for things like juice, milk, coffee and such, so would assume a 14 oz bottle to be more than one serving. Unless beer or soda, where I'd expect 12 oz to be a serving.
Funny how expectations affect so many things.0 -
I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?
if you stripped the corn from the cob, I bet it would be pretty close...the usda doesn't consider the inedible cob in the weight. the servings weights are for the edible portions.
I think a lot of people should take some general nutrition classes...a basic continuing education class will teach you how to read labels and interpret nutritional information.0 -
well, that is good to know... I guess I overestimated all the corn on the cob that I ate this past summer
I asked in another post and the response was that it included the cob too and I should log it as 2-3 servings. Glad that person was wrong because I love corn on the cob!0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?
if you stripped the corn from the cob, I bet it would be pretty close...the usda doesn't consider the inedible cob in the weight. the servings weights are for the edible portions.
I think a lot of people should take some general nutrition classes...a basic continuing education class will teach you how to read labels and interpret nutritional information.
Is this taught to kids in schools these days?
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cwolfman13 wrote: »I don't know what happened to corn since the usda first determined an ear of corn was 90 grams. Any ear of corn I've weighed is at least 2.5-3 times that. Kind of like how bananas are always "large" or larger.... I think an update to the usda definitions/weights would be nice. Who eats just a third of a corn on the cob?
if you stripped the corn from the cob, I bet it would be pretty close...the usda doesn't consider the inedible cob in the weight. the servings weights are for the edible portions.
I think a lot of people should take some general nutrition classes...a basic continuing education class will teach you how to read labels and interpret nutritional information.
or hang around MFP long enough to become experts 0 -
alltheweigh170 wrote: »So I picked up an individual bottle of mango drink (14 oz) and quickly glanced through the nutrition and saw that it was not bad. Got excited and drank the whole thing. Was entering it in MFP and the numbers didn't match. Compared it to the bottle and what do you know...it is 2 servings! Why do they label individual meals/drinks as multiple servings. Now I have to be careful and skip my afternoon snack.
I have the same problem, I buy stuff based on the calorie levels and then find that it's for more than one serving, or, just as bad, they say the breakdown for 50g?, when it's actually a 100g? serving, so my calories then have to be doubled, They should just give the breakdown per pack and per serving - I was told this was to make more people buy it (idiots like me that obviously don't look properly!).
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kshama2001 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »So they can advertise X grams of sugar or calories or whatever per serving. Or perhaps so they can label something 0 grams of something per serving by making the amount less than .5 g per serving (common with trans fats).
Yep, this. It's super annoying. If I was ever in some kind of political office these policies are something I would want to reform... but the majority of people don't care about that kind of thing anyway, so no one would vote for me with that platform
The White House and FDA Announce Proposed Updates to Nutrition Facts Label
... First Lady Michelle Obama joined Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg at the White House to announce proposed revisions to the Nutrition Facts label, which has been significantly updated only once since its initial release twenty years ago.
...The proposed updates are intended to reflect the latest scientific information about the link between diet and chronic diseases such as obesity and heart disease. The proposed label would also replace out-of-date serving sizes to better align with the amount consumers actually eat, and it would feature a fresh design to highlight key parts of the label such as calories and serving sizes.
Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/27/white-house-and-fda-announce-proposed-updates-nutrition-facts-label
I'm for realistic serving sizes, but this part in particular I'm not in support of:Update serving size requirements to reflect the amounts people currently eat. What and how much people eat and drink has changed since the serving sizes were first put into place in 1994. By law, serving sizes must be based on the portion consumers actually eat, rather than the amount they “should” be eating.
It would probably be in our best interest to teach people what a "proper" serving size is instead of expanding the serving size to fit our disproportionate view of what a serving is.0 -
PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »Pop tarts are my nemesis. I even knew when I bought them that a serving is one pop tart and has 200 calories, but who the hell eats one pop tart, and why must they package them in pairs in a non-resealable sleeve?
NSV: I actually had one pop tart with my coffee today. The other is still at home in a ziplock bag.
^This
I always ate both Pop Tarts until I started counting calories and realized that one serving was one Pop Tart. Now I only have one as a rare treat.0 -
andrikosDE wrote: »Come on America, join the metric world, you can do it.
Even though I agree, I don't think that would stop manufacturers from labeling a tiny can of soup that can't be re-closed as 2 servings.0 -
Manufactuers contine to offer "soup in 10.5 cans" because it is cost effective for them to do so. They already perfected producing and filling that sized can, have developed systems to transport that sized container, know know that customers will purchase 2.65 servings, etc. Just like its most cost effective for you to assume that one unit equals one serving. Unlike Mrs. Obama, I don't presume that U.S. consumers are too simple to read nutrition labels and have no desire to force manufacturers to only serve food in one serving packages because it negatively impacts their profitability.0
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caroldavison332 wrote: »Manufactuers contine to offer "soup in 10.5 cans" because it is cost effective for them to do so. They already perfected producing and filling that sized can, have developed systems to transport that sized container, know know that customers will purchase 2.65 servings, etc. Just like its most cost effective for you to assume that one unit equals one serving. Unlike Mrs. Obama, I don't presume that U.S. consumers are too simple to read nutrition labels and have no desire to force manufacturers to only serve food in one serving packages because it negatively impacts their profitability.
That's a fair point. What I wonder though, is do we have to take a hit on profitability in some industries for better public health? For example, assuming that having the calorie information displayed on menus causes people to either make other choices, or maybe not even consume food at certain locations, be it through peer pressure or a legitimate desire to consume fewer calories, would it be worth it?
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PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »Pop tarts are my nemesis. I even knew when I bought them that a serving is one pop tart and has 200 calories, but who the hell eats one pop tart, and why must they package them in pairs in a non-resealable sleeve?
NSV: I actually had one pop tart with my coffee today. The other is still at home in a ziplock bag.
OMG. For real!!!! I used to eat like two-four of them a day back in my days of obesity, so when I made the change in my lifestyle and read the calorie label, I was so shocked. I thought it was 200 calories for two!! I'm going to scout out and see if there exists any poptart that's 100 calories per tart. I hope there is.0
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