This is one example. Regular plain boring old Cheerios vs Chocolate Strawberry flavored Cheerios.
The labels made no sense. It took me a while to figure out why in the world the boring plain Cheerios had more saturated fat than the sweetened and flavored kind. It’s 0 grams vs 0.5 grams.
And look at the calories and carbs! It’s the same for the plain Cheerios and the sweetened Cheerios!
140 calories in each, and 29 grams of carbs in each. How does the sweetened one have the same as the unsweetened one?
They like to fudge. I don’t buy them but the smallest bag of chips will be 2.5 to 3 servings. Who doesn’t eat the whole bag?
How many carbs, let’s see 3 times 1 serving. WOW!
My other label grip is they list dietary fiber which is a combination of digestible fiber (carbs) and indigestible fiber. To get real net carbs subtract indigestible fiber from total carbs. What works fairly well for me is to divide dietary carbs by 2 and subtract that number.
Everything comes down to math! I noticed the sizes of the boxes in the picture are different too, so if you are paying the same price per box, you’re getting more bang for your buck with those fancy ones. Not only do we calculate for the correct amount of carbs, we’ve gotta crunch numbers to pay the best prices
I’ve got a friend who is a commercial baker, asked him about the nutrition labels on his packaged carb heavy treats. He said he uses software to “plug in the recipe” and is allowed to be plus or minus 20 percent on everything. I’ve never looked at nutrition labels the same since I heard that.
@Eric Yep! First, they started with the incredibly shrinking candy bars! Remember when Snickers were huge (and, of course, some of us could enjoy them)? Then, companies learned the shrink-flation gimmick: you lower the quantity, but keep the package the same size; then you lower the quantity and change the package so the size isn’t noticed; when it’s at the point everyone complains, you raise the price and restore the size, saying “Hey, look new larger size!” Wash, rinse, repeat! By then, we’re in to a new generation of customer’s…
But in this case though, the 2 cereal boxes were purchased at the same time. So it wasn’t as much an issue of economics where they shrunk the size.
I think this was intentionally misleading for the nutritional aspect. It’s the same company, and pretty much the same cereal (other than the flavoring). The serving size should be the same!
They tout Cheerios as being healthy. I think this is lousy of them.
I agree with you, one would think a serving size doesn’t vary much unless the density of the product changes significantly.
Then there’s ice cream, remember the 1/2 and 1 gallon containers? Now they’re measured in pints! (I used to love ice cream and enjoyed a bowl, not a serving, a few times a week…yes, prior to dx! Now its much less frequent and low carb!)
First, it’s for “about 2.5 servings” I appreciate their honesty that they don’t really know how much is in the bag, but really? A serving size being 2 Tbs unpopped…yeah, I pop it by the Tbs, sure I do! Then they say “It makes about 5.5 cups popped”…is that the 2 Tbs or the bag?! Then comes the actual nutrition info, conveniently stated by the 2 Tbs listed above…because everyone cooks it that way…then by the cup, not the bag, so that’s a third measurement type. Guess they’re expecting us to do the math…let’s see that’s “about” 5.5 x…no, the actual # cups x…wait, where’s that label?! Oh yeah, it was on the plastic cover that’s now in the trash covered with the left over chile from dinner…to heck with it, I’m giving myself y units and hope it works out!
I know, it isn’t really that much work…but the purpose of the label to provide information not to turn me in to a math major! I wasn’t told there’d be math!
@TomH I hate it when you can’t tell if the serving size is for uncooked or cooked? At least the popcorn says its for unpopped!!! But then that 5.5 cups is thrown in it’s gotta be for the whole bag right??? Then each serving is 2 cups and 1/5 cup? Would that be a heaping cup, two cups? Is that even right and who does those measurements? And then you have that pesky 1/2 serving out there to decide to what to do with. Are those measurements even right? And then you have my husband who would see the 5.5 cups under the serving and definitely think it was one serving. I went ahead and googled how many kernals make popped popcorn to make sure I was right and sure enough a half cup makes 8 cups popped. I happen to know that a half cup is 8 tablespoons, I cook a lot. So each tablespoon of unpopped makes 1 cup of popped. Would my husband know that or google it? No, lol. I happen to know without a measurement cup he is not good at even estimating a cup. He really thought his cup of coffee was a cup of coffee, not the 2 plus cups the mug fits.
And then we have the larger cookie that says 2 servings? People fall for that because I had an employee eating one everyday until he figured out the calorie/carb count was for half the cookie and it was a 75 carb plus snack. Or ever tried to count how many of a candy were in a bag because they say 5 servings in the bag and each serving is 3 ounces,and that’s it?
I must run into this at least once a day. Drives me nuts. My favourite recently was a four-pack of pickerel burgers. It says the serving size is 100 g. A serving is, you’d think, a burger, but each burger weighs 138 g. Why not do the PER BURGER math for us, folks? Thanks in advance.
I have to agree with @CarlosLuis! Hard to argue with just plain dumb! What do you cut from a burger to make it one serving?! Make it a doughnut? Cut the circumference? Cut a wedge?
Of course, now that it’s been raised, I’ll have to check the serving size of the buns and burgers we just bought! (Just edited this, I’m really beginning to dislike “auto-correct”, may have to turn it off!)
(I used to love ice cream and enjoyed a bowl, not a serving, a few times a week…yes, prior to dx! Now its much less frequent and low carb!)
