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.
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.
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.
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
Weight out 280g, wash it down with black coffee and a multivitamin, and that’s your dietary needs sorted for the day. Very time efficient.
There is no way you will regret your life decisions in a few days when you finally try to poop it out. “Living the same lifestyle as Elvis.”
Skill issue.
Everyone should increase their fiber intake.
I’m everyone.
in a few days
YMMV
They’re nuts dude, there’s a reason you carry them when you’re hiking. Very calorie and nutrient dense.
Yeah if 12g out of 28 is fat, that’s nearly 50%. Fat has twice as many calories per gram as carbs or protein (but at least unlike carbs, fat gives you the feeling of fullness, just also gives you a bunch of calories in the process)
That’s nuts!!
You’ll lose your mind once you see how much sugar is in everything.
Honey Nut Cheerios? The “healthy breakfast choice” we were told? Serving size is 1 cup. ~25% of the recommended daily sugar. 1 cup doesn’t fill a bowl or your stomach so you eat 2 cups, boom 50% of your daily sugar. You grab a can (12oz) of Dr Pepper with lunch? Boom that’s another ~75% of your daily recommended sugar.
It’s not even dinner and your over your sugar quota. Like 80 grams of sugar in two items.
It’s sugar if you’re lucky. Everything is mostly corn syrup. “Healthy” cereals are a huge offender here.
Every few months I track the nutritional values of everything I eat for a few days. It’s insane how much small things can balloon from OK to insane.
Does someone who cares about their sugar intake drink a Dr. Pepper on the reg? Surely by this point everyone knows sodas are just liquid sugar, right?
People seem to know but not really care. And you are not allowed to tell them. I was at a wedding and there were like 6 children from 3 to 8 years old. They juat smashed coce and fanta like it’s nothing. One of the kids was double fisting two cans of coke, and i thought that people don’t realise, because they juat picked it out of a cooler, no one was handing them out. When i told tge mom of the kid, she was kind of mad and said it’s fine, it’s an exception today. Usually he only gets one or two cans a day. My sister comprised by not giving their kids soda but gives them a ton of orange juice. I told her that it’s kind of the same amount of sugar, and she got mad and said something like: yeah but it’s the healthy kind. I’m at a point where i just don’t care anymore. Let your child eat pasta and ketchup in a 1:1 ratio then.
Calorie counting can be eye opening. That said, calories from nuts in particular don’t seem to be absorbed very well
Huh, do tell. I thought the whole point of nutritional labels is that they estimate the kcal intake from heuristically determined values for the contained fats, carbs, and proteins, i.e., we get 4kcal per gram of carbs and proteins and 9kcal per gram of fat.
I know these aren’t peanuts but I recently learned of the “peanut paradox.” Peanuts have quite a bit of calories; but your body can’t break down the cell walls of peanuts very well, so you only actually take on a fraction of those calories.
