Can someone explain for non american, why in usa food nutrition facts is measured in arbitrary serving sizes? In my country almost every food is measured exactly by 100g, while the rest may measure it by total package.
If I’m making a sandwich, I’m using 2 pieces of bread, not 100 grams. Having the nutrition information denominated in slices simplifies calculating how many calories/macros/etc. I am eating.
In Europe, it is really bad with snacks. You can buy a pack of individually-wrapped chocolates, and the nutrition label will helpfully tell you there is 500 billion calories in 100g. Thankfully, I am not looking to eat a quarter pound of chocolate in one sitting, but I would be interested in knowing (without getting a scale and doing the math) on what one of the chocolates contains.
Serving sizes are imperfect, and in general American food is trash nutrition-wise, but the labeling standards are quite good. My biggest complaint is the loophole allowing 0.5g and less of sugar/trans fat/etc to be reported as 0g - not anything to do with the serving size.
To me it doesn’t matter if it’s directly relevant when I’m trying to compare one product in the store to another one.
If one brand says two slices but its a weird shape and the other has slightly larger slices in a normal shape I can’t tell which one has more calories.
I think they should always have three categories, package size, serving size, and 100g
It’s better for comparing two chocolates against each other. Besides, 100g is a standard bar of chocolate.
It will also have the full weight of the product with nutritional information. So dividing by no. of pieces should be easy.
Well sometimes I want to compare nuts to other things. I want to be able to picture how MUCH of something contains how much energy (like when figuring out what best to snack on without jeopardizing my figure :p). I also want to be able to compare the energy per price of different products, like when figuring out the most calorie dense option for taking a hike etc. These are just examples. All I’m saying is that a fixed quantity on every product makes some mental math much easier. Similarly how all price tags (where I’m from) have the nominal price of the product AND the price normalized to 1kg of weight.
Regulatory capture. The 5 companies that make and distribute all American food want to be able to control how the nutritional content appears to people. So they can better manipulate them into eating more, or less healthy products. It’s intentionally done to rob consumers of agency.
These cashews are a great example. People don’t want to eat 1,000 calories in a sitting. So the company displays the nutritional information in such a way that it looks like a “serving” is only 100 calories. They do this when the salt or fat content is very high as well.
The most egregious example is that they used to do this with a single candy bar too, but a few years ago the regulatory body finally told them they couldn’t do that anymore. So now the two-hand sized Snickers in a single wrapper is split into “two bars”. The big-ass coke in a single bottle still gets to pretend it’s 2.5 servings though.
The big-ass coke in a single bottle still gets to pretend it’s 2.5 servings though.
The really funny thing is that back in the day it was even worse. They had ads claiming a 12oz Coke bottle was 3 “large” servings, and a lady serving little whiskey glasses of it to her friends.
Take TicTac for example. Serving size: 1 TicTac. Which is just below 0.5g. So one serving contains less than 0.5g sugar (despite being 99.x% sugar!), which means it can be advertized as sugar free in some locations.
Or frozen pizza. Serving size: 1/3 pizza. Seriously? 1/3? Yes, because with that serving size, it keeps fat and salt ratings below the recommended daily intake.
Those serving sizes, while they are far from making sense for the consumer, are chosen very deliberate.
The amount of something you’re going to eat will vary significantly based on what it is. That said, you’re going to find in the US that categories are pretty standard, for example the serving size for nuts is pretty much always 1/4 cup/28g. 100g of most nuts is way too much to be a recommended serving size
Can someone explain for non american, why in usa food nutrition facts is measured in arbitrary serving sizes? In my country almost every food is measured exactly by 100g, while the rest may measure it by total package.
Because 100 grams isn’t relevant for many foods.
If I’m making a sandwich, I’m using 2 pieces of bread, not 100 grams. Having the nutrition information denominated in slices simplifies calculating how many calories/macros/etc. I am eating.
In Europe, it is really bad with snacks. You can buy a pack of individually-wrapped chocolates, and the nutrition label will helpfully tell you there is 500 billion calories in 100g. Thankfully, I am not looking to eat a quarter pound of chocolate in one sitting, but I would be interested in knowing (without getting a scale and doing the math) on what one of the chocolates contains.
Serving sizes are imperfect, and in general American food is trash nutrition-wise, but the labeling standards are quite good. My biggest complaint is the loophole allowing 0.5g and less of sugar/trans fat/etc to be reported as 0g - not anything to do with the serving size.
To me it doesn’t matter if it’s directly relevant when I’m trying to compare one product in the store to another one.
If one brand says two slices but its a weird shape and the other has slightly larger slices in a normal shape I can’t tell which one has more calories.
I think they should always have three categories, package size, serving size, and 100g
In europe you will mostly see beside the 100g a “per portion” or “per piece”
The orange one is per rusk, the blue one is per 100g
Some products may not have it i think but it never happened to me to not find it
It’s better for comparing two chocolates against each other. Besides, 100g is a standard bar of chocolate. It will also have the full weight of the product with nutritional information. So dividing by no. of pieces should be easy.
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All of our food labeling has the metric equivalent right next to the imperial units.
That is not an American thing, most packages in Europe will also include some arbitrary/common measure along side the standardised one.
That’s the point, they’re only along side the standardised one. It makes it much easier to compare products.
It’s standardized across products as well. Comparison is not an issue.
Well sometimes I want to compare nuts to other things. I want to be able to picture how MUCH of something contains how much energy (like when figuring out what best to snack on without jeopardizing my figure :p). I also want to be able to compare the energy per price of different products, like when figuring out the most calorie dense option for taking a hike etc. These are just examples. All I’m saying is that a fixed quantity on every product makes some mental math much easier. Similarly how all price tags (where I’m from) have the nominal price of the product AND the price normalized to 1kg of weight.
Regulatory capture. The 5 companies that make and distribute all American food want to be able to control how the nutritional content appears to people. So they can better manipulate them into eating more, or less healthy products. It’s intentionally done to rob consumers of agency.
These cashews are a great example. People don’t want to eat 1,000 calories in a sitting. So the company displays the nutritional information in such a way that it looks like a “serving” is only 100 calories. They do this when the salt or fat content is very high as well.
The most egregious example is that they used to do this with a single candy bar too, but a few years ago the regulatory body finally told them they couldn’t do that anymore. So now the two-hand sized Snickers in a single wrapper is split into “two bars”. The big-ass coke in a single bottle still gets to pretend it’s 2.5 servings though.
The really funny thing is that back in the day it was even worse. They had ads claiming a 12oz Coke bottle was 3 “large” servings, and a lady serving little whiskey glasses of it to her friends.
That serving size is anything but arbitrary.
Take TicTac for example. Serving size: 1 TicTac. Which is just below 0.5g. So one serving contains less than 0.5g sugar (despite being 99.x% sugar!), which means it can be advertized as sugar free in some locations.
Or frozen pizza. Serving size: 1/3 pizza. Seriously? 1/3? Yes, because with that serving size, it keeps fat and salt ratings below the recommended daily intake.
Those serving sizes, while they are far from making sense for the consumer, are chosen very deliberate.
The amount of something you’re going to eat will vary significantly based on what it is. That said, you’re going to find in the US that categories are pretty standard, for example the serving size for nuts is pretty much always 1/4 cup/28g. 100g of most nuts is way too much to be a recommended serving size
Because Americans are/want to be special snowflakes and therefore do everything differently from the rest of the world lol
Don’t spread misinformation. We’re just stupid.
Stick to the facts.