How US labeling is decieving

DFW_Tom wrote: »

neanderthin wrote: »

Are you an engineer, just curious.

I'm a retired Electrical Contractor. Now, nearly 2 years into trying to figure out all this nutrition/health stuff. It continues to be time well spent.

Right, makes sense. Nutrition is fascinating and it keeps you wanting more, no doubt about that. Cheers.

ninerbuff wrote: »

Also watch out for junk food stating "healthy" on packaging just because a nutrient or mineral may exceed standard RDA even by a little.

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Yeah, for sure. Most children's cereals and cereals in general have a very long history for claims of health benefits, which imo was and is disinformation, apple juice and other fruit juices another one.

nossmf wrote: »

Changing track slightly, but last night I encountered the very first case I can recall of a "serving size" being actually SMALLER than I would expect. Almost invariably, a "serving size" is ridiculously small, and a person consumes much more as a matter of course. But last night my family had Blue Bunny Star Bars for dessert, basically chocolate-coated ice cream on a stick. We always get one stick per person, but I happened to notice the packaging said one serving was actually TWO sticks. Well, I'll be darned.

Coffee creamer for me. It's 35 cal per serving, and when I tracked my actual servings from opening to finishing a bottle I was actually getting about 2.5x as many servings. With a typical 3 cups per day, I was over-stating my calorie inputs by about 65 calories daily.

EDIT: Not a case of a label being deceiving, but at least for me I was surprised to find they were using what I thought was a very generous serving which makes the bottle seem a) higher calorie, b) lower value.

ninerbuff wrote: »

"Free Range" on packaging is deceptive too since there's no solid criteria on what is considered "free range". There's minimum standard and for chickens it is just being able to poke it's head through a hole of an enclosure.

The USDA’s (and industry standard) definition for “Free Range” is that birds must have “outdoor access” or “access to the outdoors.” In some cases, this can mean access only through a “pop hole,” with no full-body access to the outdoors and no minimum space requirement.
https://certifiedhumane.org/free-range-and-pasture-raised-officially-defined-by-hfac-for-certified-humane-label/



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Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Local butcher shops have a tendency to source there own beef and chicken from local farmers and often have eggs available for sale, so that might be an option. I live in a rural area where I source my eggs directly from 2 farms and prices are comparable, unless comparing to the cheapest battery eggs. Cheers

kshama2001 wrote: »

ninerbuff wrote: »

Also watch out for junk food stating "healthy" on packaging just because a nutrient or mineral may exceed standard RDA even by a little.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Yes, Michael Pollan suggests "...if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims."

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html

I like Michael and his way of thinking.

https://michaelpollan.com/interviews/food-fight/

Humans can thrive on all sorts of diets. Some live healthy lives on nothing but cattle or seafood. In fact, he says, there’s only one diet that has consistently proved hazardous to our health.

The Western Diet.

I worry about these new rating systems that are poised to take over the supermarket. And very soon there’ll be these ABC ratings or 1 through 100, helping you distinguish whether the Nilla Wafers are better than the Chips Ahoy

ninerbuff wrote: »

Also for organic products the ones you should still research it because even if it says "certified organic" the rules have change to help accommodate larger companies.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Also regarding "Certified Organic"--A small local farmer who uses top quality seeds and no pesticides and does everything right probably won't be "Certified Organic" because they haven't jumped through the hoops required to get the official United States stamp.

yirara wrote: »

I'm a bit confused. Is nutritional info in the US given by serving? Then showing a tiny 6gr of fat can be a lot. In pretty much all of Europe calories are given per 100gr, and the macros in grams. And sometimes, calories are additionally given by some random serving. But 100gr is always a must

Yes, it's by serving in the US. Which can make it tricky to know how many calories are in one product vs. another. Sometimes they don't even list an amount for a serving, but simply state there are "2 servings per packet"

springlering62 wrote: »

And what’s maddening is when a food is obviously single serve yet the fine print says it’s “two servings”.

That infuriates me.

Yes!!!!!!!

Yikes!

In the US, food manufacturers do not just make up what they think should be a serving. FDA specifies what a serving size is for a particular type of food.

On the poptart question - where is everyone seeing that a serving is only 1 poptart? Reference amount from FDA is 110g which equates to 2 pastries. Every single label I just looked up for Kellogg's poptarts (both on the Kellogg's website as well as sites where they are being sold such as Target, Walmart, Sam's Club, etc.), a serving was listed as 2 pastries, not 1. Please don't tell me that you are believing what MFP says.