Parkay 0 calorie butter spray is 832 calories a bottle!

A bottle usually last me about 9 days. That's only about 100 calories a day. But they're what I used to call "crypto calories." For a while I never counted things like carrots, celery, or sugar-free jello. Then I realized that that decision led me to eat so much of those foods that the hidden calories were adding up. For a while I tracked all the "crypto calories" in the notes section for all the foods that I previously never counted. The tally reached 200 to 300 per day. Then I stopped keeping the tally in the notes but kept counting them from then on.

I only elected not to count certain low calorie foods because I was adapting the MFP site to how some parts of WeightWatchers worked. WW had zero point foods, so I had done the same here. . .

Actually this isn't new. This was pointed out to me several years ago when spray butter had just come out.

"Berman also charges that with its Parkay Spray, ConAgra is intentionally targeting a health-conscious portion of the public. "You really wouldn't buy it unless you thought it had zero calories and zero fat," Berman said. "

False. Knowing that it does have calories I still buy it because I use it as intended. 5-10 sprays is all I use at any given time, knowing full well that each spray is just shy of a calorie. Doesn't bother me. And I prefer buying the spray bottle because it is easier to get a bit of butter flavor with the bottle than trying to scrape out ten calories worth of margarine from the tub.

I can go on about how the company is legally allowed to set its own serving size and manipulate this to where they can legally state that the calorie and fat content are both 0 but I won't. Guess what? PAM has calories too. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fats-and-oils/9751/2

Edit: Also, I'd much rather have realish butter in spray form with all its calories than some sort of chemically butter flavored water. Though what do I know...that may be what it is anyway. Meh.

That's all well and good. I will probably keep using some of this myself. But I do intend to water it down 50%. Manipulating serving size is something that is industry wide. But you have to admit TribeHokie that Parkay has done this specifically to make people think that there are no calories in the spray. It would be more accurate if companies had to say "1 calorie" if it was something like .8.

There are plenty of books and documentaries about how the food industry lets people believe that those zero fat candies or low sugar fattening treats are healthy. A lot of people don't even know what healthy food is, so when a box says "now with real fruit" and it's absolute crap, customers are quite clueless. They think, "if these are healthy snacks, I can eat as much as I want! And they do. We should have a movement for more honest labeling in the food industry, and that includes identifying foods to the nearest calorie in single digits, and not rounding a 4 calorie serving down to zero. Many consumers aren't educated enough to identify that canned spaghettios with meatballs and banana nut cereal isn't actually good for them.