How would you tell consumers what they are eating? February is national Canned Food Month. See, "February: National Canned Food Month." The FDA wants to give you a reality check by increasing serving sizes on food labels. The Food and Drug Administration has finally found a weapon against obesity printed on labels.
It's portion or serving size that you read on food labels that are so small, they can't possibly be realistic. According to the February 6, 2010 NY Times article by William Neuman, "F.D.A. Weighs Update to Standard Serving Sizes - NYTimes.com." Serving sizes are much smaller than you'd think they might appear.
What the real problem is you get a can of wild-caught salmon or a small container of soup, for example that on the label says that it contains two servings. But each serving is about a quarter of a cup. That's unrealistic. Do you really want to make a meal of 1/4 cup of fish?
It would fit on a sandwich if you mixed it with a lot of gooey, fatty extender such as mayonnaise and/or other condiments and chopped vegetables. You conceivably could make a salad, by mixing it with 1/4 cup of minced celery, 1/4 cup of chopped onion, 1/4 cup of chopped spinach, 1/4 cup chopped or grated carrots, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, and a teaspoon of grape seed oil mayonnaise.
Or you could eat the two servings in the can of salmon as an example. But if the can contained 250 mg of salt per serving and you ate all the servings in the can, plus any mayonnaise containing another 180 mg of salt per serving, add up the figures, and you no longer have a low-salt salad. Then add two slices of bread with each slice containing 200 mg of salt baked into the bread, and you have a high-salt sandwich for somebody who thinks they're on a good diet for the one-fifth of the population that's salt-sensitive.
According to the NY Times article, the FDA is looking for a smarter way to fight obesity, the Food and Drug Administration wants to encourage manufacturers to post vital nutritional information, including calorie counts, on the front of food packages. What needs to happen is that nutritional information such as calorie counts need to be revised. Portion sizes are too small. They have to be increased on food labels. And the reason the FDA wants this change is because the population is just too obese, in their opinion.
The goal is to give people a jolt of reality. Currently, official serving sizes for many packaged foods are just too small. And that means the calorie counts that go with them are often misleading.
Changes may be coming to front-of-package nutrition labeling. Does the FDA know how Americans really eat--as far as portion sizes? If labels were changed, perhaps consumers would be more cautious about how many snack foods, salty foods, fatty foods, or sweets they're eating. It's about making the public aware and concerned what they eat.
What's a meaningful portion size to put on a label that reflects the reality of what most people eat in the USA? And would the calorie counts be realistic?
Standard serving sizes shown on food packages show the other nutritional values on the label, including calorie counts. You can probably bet the serving size you eat is more than what the serving size states on a label of a food product, such as a package or can. Most people think they're getting fewer calories than they really are eating because of the unrealistic serving sizes or portion sizes on labels.
Some manufacturers are promoting key nutrition facts to the front of packages. But wouldn't this lead to more confusion? Will people be stymied over what a healthy diet really is like? Do you really understand the serving? Can you eat just 1 1/4 ounces of chocolate or 1/4 can of fish? Can you realistically gobble down one ounce, which is one serving of cheese or chips?
If one serving is six chips, don't most people eat the whole bag of chips in a small bag, not stopping at six chips, the one serving? You're probably going to eat double that or more. For example if you eat a half bag of Tostitos, you might be consuming 2,000 calories. That's more than you need in a day unless you're a huge male who works out or has a job requiring a lot of exercise and energy. But of course, it's all about the size of the bag in the first place.
Look at serving size. Is it what you eat by habit? Or do you eat triple that serving size on the label of say, a pint of ice cream? There's an office in the FDA that oversees nutrition labels. Its goal is to help you to make healthier choices. Will better labeling requirements work? Or will people eat by habit?
Officials say such labeling will be voluntary, but the agency may set rules to prevent companies from highlighting the good things about their products, like a lack of trans fats, while ignoring the bad, like a surfeit of unhealthy saturated fats, according to the NY Times article.
Let's look at what serving sizes really depict:
Ice Cream: Half a Cup. (But don't you eat the whole pint in a few minutes while reading the newspaper?)
Breakfast muffins in a package: Serving size: Half a muffin. (You know you always eat the whole muffin. That's two servings.) You'll have to double the label headings to figure out what you just ate.
Cookies you serve to kids: A serving is once ounce. Usually that's two small cookies.
Kids' breakfast cereals: A serving is three-quarters of a cup. But don't you fill up a bowl of cereal that comes to at least a full cup and more likely, two cups of cold cereal? For example, Frosted Flakes has 110 calories per serving. Guess how small the serving size is and how large your appetite for the sweet taste is because of your sugar preference or habit? Do you really eat one tiny serving?
Is it because you're addicted to or have formed a habit of eating two cups of a particular cereal because it tastes sweet or good to you? How about eating a cup of whole oat groats, cooked or steamed, instead? To be healthy, eat like a horse--whole oat groats or steamed, soaked, or softened whole grains.
Portion sizes are getting larger. Restaurants are serving bigger portions. Are portion sizes inconsistent? You can find lots more information on food at the site of the International Food Information Council Foundation. See IFIC's Food Insight page.
According to the NY Times article, the FDA created standard serving sizes in the early 1990s. The whole idea should have been to make it easier to compare the nutritional values of different products. Congress required that the serving sizes match what people actually ate. To determine that, the F.D.A. evaluated data from surveys of Americans’ eating habits taken in the 1970s and 1980s.
Well, times have changed. People today are eating larger portions because what's put in the processed food addicts you to keep coming back for more and more because of the taste, such as sweeteners, fats, chocolate, or other foods that keep you coming back out of habit. The four most addictive foods are sugar, chocolate, cheese, and meat. Salt in foods also is addictive as are flavor extenders, some spices, and even MSG.
Do you underestimate how much you eat? Are portion sizes on labels also out of date?
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