A serving is WHAT????
Skyleen75
Posts: 705 Member
Starting a space for the frustration when a “serving” is so ridiculously small it feels pointless.
I’ll start-
140 calories per serving sounds great until you realize it’s NINE CHIPS. Has anyone ever eaten just 9 chips????
I’ll start-
140 calories per serving sounds great until you realize it’s NINE CHIPS. Has anyone ever eaten just 9 chips????
5
Replies
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LOL I actually have but it's with a whole bunch of different stuff in one sitting but, yeah, recommended serving sizes of some things sometimes suck out loud.
It's why I I like miniature foods! The quantity seems bigger.1 -
Pillsbury Chocolate Fudge Brownies sound great at 110 calories per serving...until you see it's 1/18th of the prepared box. That's barely enough to make a single mouthful. *sigh*4
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A serving of crackers is 5 crackers.4
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Well sure .. if it's high in something, the way to make it sound healthy is to reduce the serving size to a healthy macro! ... Ignore that! Just eat as much as you want for your portion and do the math! ... A serving of carbohydrate is 15 grams.1
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I love that a 'serving' of Vlassic pickles is half a pickle - because half a pickle is under 5 cal, so they can legally round it down to 0 calories, and that's a good selling point. Makes it look like pickles are a 0 calorie food.9
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Five crackers, one bite of brownie! A HALF A PICKLE!!!! I’m dying laughing- you are my people @Alatariel75 @teelabrown7 @nossmf4
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That is precisely the reason I prefer the scientific (and European) way where nutrition labels are normalised to 100 g. That makes it much easier to compare foods and also to have a meaningful of determining how much one actually eats. All one needs to do, is weigh. In my opinion, that is infinitely more reliable than those ridiculous "cups". They all differ in size and this can add up. A 250 ml cup of oil is about 2,250 kcal, while a 240 ml cup of oil is 2,160 kcal or 90 kcal less. While no one will probably drink an entire cup of oil, many people will eat several cups of spinach, and really, how much is there in a cup of spinach?
These servings were concocted because they "make it easy to understand" for Americans, and quite a few Europeans agree and envy the Americans... until you point out how unrealistic and unreliable these measurements actually are.
In my opinion, normalising everything to 100 g is the way to go. While there will still be variability, food is a natural product and there are natural differences, but normalising to 100 g, just reduces that variability tremendously and to the maximum extent possible. That's especially important when trying to lose or gain weight.7 -
Nuts and seeds. Expecially Macadamia.
Peanut butter, of course.
Pasta and rice
Cereals
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A single serving of peanut butter, weighed out, is simply sadness...
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On the flip side of that, I often am shocked at the LARGE serving size for some chocolate bars and products.
I get good quality dark chocolate bars, and one or two squares at a time is perfect for me. The label on the bar usually says it contains about 2.5 servings. I get at least double out of it.
At Easter, my mom always buys me a Fannie May solid dark chocolate bunny. I dismember him and eat bunny hunks for weeks. The box says "serving size: half a bunny". Half a bunny? I'd get sick if I ate that much chocolate in one sitting.4 -
Look at condiments, sauces and dressings. They will usually be a single tablespoon (ketchup, mayonnaise, salad dressing) or a single teaspoon (almost all hot sauces). Who puts a single teaspoon of wing sauce on a plate of wings or in a bowl of soup? For me, with high blood pressure, the problem isn't the calories per serving it's the sodium.4
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I think there's also a historic perspective component here. The serving sizes that people are satisfied with have increased very dramatically over the years. 50 years ago, these were probably a realistic amount that people ate. Food labels haven't caught up with the current expectations of a "serving size".
Look up a McDonald's meal from the 1950s and see what the portion sizes were...a 3.5 oz burger, a 2.4 oz fries, a 7 oz drink. Even if you order the "small" now, it's bigger than that.6 -
Five crackers, one bite of brownie! A HALF A PICKLE!!!! I’m dying laughing- you are my people @Alatariel75 @teelabrown7 @nossmf
Yes!
I HATE when a serving is a half of something or completely unrealistic. I also hate that the USDA lets them round down the amounts if it's less than 5. Also, bags that look like a small single serving but when you look it's something like 1.5 servings.... who is going to not eat that whole thing in that tiny bag? Just tell me the amount for the whole thing already. 2 -
My personal favorite was an individually packaged muffin that had a serving size of 1/3 of the muffin. Who buys a muffin to split with two friends?4
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A quarter of a pint of Ben and Jerry's. Yeah, right. Everyone knows one pint equals one serving.6
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Anything clearly packaged for individual consumption should be labeled as such.
My favorite is those Lenny and Larry cookies that people think are "healthy".
One cookie is two servings of 210 calories each. So, 420 calories if you eat the whole cookie.
And at only 8g of protein for those 210 calories, it's not even an efficient way of getting extra protein.5 -
Well sure .. if it's high in something, the way to make it sound healthy is to reduce the serving size to a healthy macro! ... Ignore that! Just eat as much as you want for your portion and do the math! ... A serving of carbohydrate is 15 grams.
In the US, servings sizes are dictated to food manufacturers by FDA, not something they just make up on their own. The only way a manufacturer can legally reduce the serving size is to reduce the size of the package. And if the package is small enough, they don't have to put the info on the package - just give you a contact number to call to get the information.Alatariel75 wrote: »I love that a 'serving' of Vlassic pickles is half a pickle - because half a pickle is under 5 cal, so they can legally round it down to 0 calories, and that's a good selling point. Makes it look like pickles are a 0 calorie food.
Same with rounding - the regulations are very specific on how information on labels must be rounded. For me personally, I would put a 5 calorie food in the same category as one with 0 calories (negligible effect on my daily total). For pickles, there is a standard serving size (1oz) and pickles come in many shapes and sizes. Hence the 1/2 pickle serving size.
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56 grams of (dry) spaghetti. It's just pathetic.1
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Here's an article from the FDA explaining some of the more recent changes:
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/food-serving-sizes-have-reality-check
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Mouse_Potato wrote: »My personal favorite was an individually packaged muffin that had a serving size of 1/3 of the muffin. Who buys a muffin to split with two friends?
At least you have some height with a muffin. 3 servings for a regular (as opposed to mini) Moonpie.1 -
Anything where the nutrition information can't be matched to obvious "chunks." Such as when cookies list the calories per ounce, or something.
I think they cracked down on all the juice drinks listing more than a serving per can. (Even stranger, I've seen some with "2.5 servings" per can, or something like that.)
As @BartBVanBockstaele notes, listing calories per weight does allow for comparison to other foods, but I don't carry a scale with me everywhere I go!1 -
I was just knee deep in a pure sugar craving and. picked up a box of Dots- FIVE GUMDROPS! I wanted to murder someone.
So of course that slapped me back to reality and bought some grapes3 -
OMG I am slayed imaging eating a third of a Moon pie!!!! Or splitting a muffin into 3 equal servings.
And as far as I’m concerned a serving of peanut butter is 1/4 jar!3 -
<giggle>I like that. I see it as an encouragement to eat at home, not outside. If I do that most of the time, possible mistakes by eating out and not being able to measure, don't really matter much. If we cannot do the best thing, we can always do the better thing ^_^. Or in other words, we should not let perfection be the enemy of the good.Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »As @BartBVanBockstaele notes, listing calories per weight does allow for comparison to other foods, but I don't carry a scale with me everywhere I go!
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You are very frugal. For me, a serving is the jar, it does not matter how big it is, 340 g or 2 kg. Down my gullet with it! Needless to say: I learned to stay away from it. Abstention is often significantly easier than moderation.OMG I am slayed imaging eating a third of a Moon pie!!!! Or splitting a muffin into 3 equal servings.
And as far as I’m concerned a serving of peanut butter is 1/4 jar!
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »Anything where the nutrition information can't be matched to obvious "chunks." Such as when cookies list the calories per ounce, or something.
They are not supposed to do that but it is probably the most common error on labels that I see. In the US, all Nutrition Facts labels are supposed to list a "common household measure" as part of the description for a serving since people don't always have access to a scale. For items in chunks/pieces, that would mean so many pieces per serving. For liquids, it would be units like Tbsp, cups, etc. For a piece of cheese that is cut from a block, it should state the dimensions in inches of the (1 oz) serving.
I have a bag of pork rinds on my desk at work right now that merely states "1/2 oz". That's wrong.
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Good for you! Well done. In my case, I would have had to turn to a portion of green beans, grapes have too many calories for me to be able to eat a reasonable portion. Eating half a grape every other day is not particularly realistic ^_^So of course that slapped me back to reality and bought some grapes
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@BartBVanBockstaele I’m working on my self control and I feel 1/4 jar is reasonable also regardless of jar size. I enjoy the economy school cafeteria style 64 ounce monster.2
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Also I use a knife and fork on that half a grape and a small plate to trick myself into thinking it’s more filling.0
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
As @BartBVanBockstaele notes, listing calories per weight does allow for comparison to other foods, but I don't carry a scale with me everywhere I go!
It's far from universal but I see quite a few nutritional labels with both here:
- per 100gr
- per unit/several units/portion size
For example for After Eight mints, a serving is 2 mints:
I'm a huge fan of that for 'ready to eat' foods such as cookies.
I was going to say that ridiculous serving sizes are a typically US thing, but I stand corrected. For a small 45gr bag of Lays chips, the stated portion size is 40 grams
Who on earth would leave 5 grams for another time?
And on top of that, a large bag of exactly the same chips states 30gr as a portion...3
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