At least the bar in question *could* be divided into two portions. I've seen a number of snack bags - nuts, crisps, that sort of thing - where the content was (for example) 37g but the 'portion' used for nutritional labelling was 25g. So, what, I throw the other 12g away? Whip out my calculator and work out the remainder myself? Bah. Bah, I say.
That entirely depends on whether you think telling someone how much they should be eating is useless information. If you give people the nutritional info of the portion that they are eating, you are implicitly communicating that their portion size is OK. And then they observe: "Hey, every portion I read has too much bad stuff in it. So what do I eat?" --instead of asking: "So how much do I eat?". You're coming at it backwards. The first problem is portion size, which is naturally dictated by its nutritional content. No, it's adding unnecessary and not necessarily accurate information which may not apply to the consumer reading the label. We don't know how much they eat. We do know how much they should be eating; that applies to most adults all the same. Simple is best. The same agency that forces manufacturers to put portions and contents on the label: the Food Standards Agency. Extrapolate 25g to 37g? Divide by two; multiply by three. It's basic school arithmetic.
The information is there and plain to see, the label info is more than enough for anyone to make an informed decision, if they care too. but far too many prefer to defer their own responsibilities and or failings to someone else. As for 2 of your examples; a bottle of coke will last me all day, how many servings is that and how much sugar have I consumed per serving? Answer, many servings and none, I always choose zero or Pepsi Max, the label allows me to make this choice. A marathon bar, I always cut them into 5 or 6 slices and eat it over the course of the day, my calorie intake is exactly equal to someone who eats it in one go, it matters not the total calories can easily be seen by the current label
The issue here, in my opinion at least can be broken down into the following: 1. Portion sizes and advertising on the products that we buy are deceptive and misleading. Take this as an example, you go to a supermarket of your choice for your lunch, they tend to offer a "meal deal" which costs a similar amount or less to just the sandwich. Now you have a choice of "snacks" that include pork pies, bags of crisps, etc, sure there are fruit bags of a few slices of apples, but they are priced lower than the others. Then onto the drinks, there are a lot of options of colourful bottles, at higher prices, then you have the "healthy" juices, then the cheaper bottles of not exciting water. Now most people buy with economy and value in mind, they buy the triple pack of sandwiches, they buy the "premium" crisps, and of course for maximum value you choose a fizzy premium drink. Or you take the following approach to be healthy, buy a salad, a fruit juice and the apples. The salad has more sugars and fats than the sandwich, the juice has more sugars, the apples... Well OK they're actually healthy. Remove the "meal deal" element and you would probably pick something different. Let's go for a different option, a pizza from the store. Serving suggestion is probably 1/4 or 1/2 I don't actually have the box anymore. But who really only has that, most people have the whole thing, plus a sauce on the side and perhaps a garlic bread/baguette. Then a glass of wine or a beer. Sure you could buy a smaller pizza, but they are more expensive so why would you. 2. The nutritional information is at best confusing. You have per portion, per x grams, I looked at one earlier that had % next to the per x grams. The portion was 1 piece of chocolate and the % was total of the rda. My initial thought of the % column was that it was a %of the piece, eg sugars x% fats x% etc. Turns out the % is the %of rda per portion. In this case 18% of rda for sugars in 1 piece. Who has 1 piece of chocolate? 3. Snacking. Snacking is bad, we don't need to snack we need to eat better. I know that I don't tend to eat breakfast, like a lot of people. I do eat a good balanced lunch, a sandwich or 2, piece of fruit, perhaps a bag of crisps and a standard size chocolate bar, 2 finger kit kat type thing. I then have a moderately healthy dinner. 4. Lifestyle is too sedentary. At least in my case I don't move around enough, between work where I am sat down most of the day and seeing the family and eating there just isn't the time in the day to exercise enough, we now drive to work from our front door, usually to the front door of our work. It is easier and quicker. People have choices, they decide what to do, but they are easily led, persuaded by ads, confused by portions. Sure people can make better choices but only if they are better informed. The only way for that to happen is government regulation, not voluntary control of the industry.
As I have said, telling someone the nutritional information of what they [most likely] are eating and the value they should be eating is beneficial. Packaging something in a single unit that is twice the size of a portion is what communicates that it is OK to eat that much. Not the label. Reading the label is typically an after thought (in my own experience and obersvation). The label should reflect reality. As Porkin's pointed out earlier the per 100g is probably the closest to an ideal as the values act as percentages of the whole product. It requires a bit more work to get the information out, but at the same time there is less chances of someone misinterpreting them, which is what the per portion system can more easily do. As I have said all label information is highly generalised, I'm suggesting that it be made more accurate than it currently is. All labelling still requires personal responsibility, knowledge of ones self and nutrition in order to be applied. Having looked at an e-learning module on the FSAI website, which I'm sure is derived from european wide rules and so would apply to the FSA as well, the only mandatory labelling is of Energy, fat, protein and salt per 100g. In fact one of the slides says "The FBO has decided that a consumption unit is one biscuit and a portion is two biscuits" The FBO being the food business operator. So there you go, manufacturers are deciding their own portion size. What a shocker. As dancingbear noted earlier the labelling is largely voluntarily. Which of course is why the labelling is not consistent across products, except of course in the mandatory are I've outlined in this paragraph. The next time you bump into a dietician ask her what the recommended portion of coke per day is. I doubt she would say anything but zero. If anything she would probably state a portion per week or month. Regardless of how you eat it, your actual calorie in take will not be on the label. You will have to either multiply the value on the label by two or work it out from percentages based on a per 100g nutritional matrix. Yes, multiplying by two is easy. But its something that can be easily missed, the labels are intentionally misleading. I couldn't agree more.
Not necessarily. Nobody thinks that a whole box of cornflakes is one portion. Nobody thinks you're supposed to down a 2l bottle of coke in one go, or a 200g bar of chocolate, or a 150g bag of crisps, or a 500ml tub of ice cream. When people do, they know that they are being gluttonous. You're right that people don't read labels --and that is where it stops. People know full well what foods are not terribly healthy for them, like smokers know full well that smoking is bad. This is not a lack of information problem. The FBO also employs nutritionists. And the dietician would reply that a recommended portion of coke is none at all, but also have an opinion about the relatively harmless portion. Like we have maximum drinking limits, but no minimum ones. So knowing that, you pay extra attention to what the label says, no? It's your waistline.
Rocket surgery it isn't, if someone can't understand a food label then I have to wonder how they cope in real life with everything else, a hell of a lot of stuff is costed per unit and we seem to manage to do simple maths an order what we need.
Obviously its not something that is infinitely scalable. The problem of course is that there is no fixed rule that can be applied generically. Otherwise the likes of the FSA would have applied it a long time ago. At the same time there are clearly items that are packaged, sold and consumed as single portions but are labelled as at least two portions with the express purpose of obfuscating how bad these things are for you. I didn't say people don't read labels, rather they look at them during or after consumption which is inline with my own experience and observations. Yes people know stuff is bad for them, but do they realise how bad these things are for them? Fixing food Labels isn't going to fix peoples diets. Ultimately kids need to be thought about food from a young age. But fixing labels is one component of the solution. You seem to be jumping from its the FSA that hires these magical dieticians to the FBOs. Which is it? Its more likely that the food business operators hire a food scientist to create the labels and not a dietician. Quite frankly once you have the nutritional information established (something a scientist would do) you don't need a degree in dietetics to divide it into RDAs. Once you have the RDAs you can tweak the portion size until you have the smallest reasonable serving size which shows the least amount of calories on the label. Yes I pay extra attention to the label, because invariably the label has some level of obfuscation on it. That is not the result of magical dieticians. That is the deliberate obfuscation of information by the food business operators. Not everyone pays such close attention to these things. Its similar to the €9.99 vs €10.00 thing. Everyone knows why its 9.99 and not 10.00. People know the true value and don't think knocking a cent of the price affects their decisions, but invariably it does. In something I thought I would never say, I'm actually advocating the method the FDA uses in America. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...this_pint_of_ben_jerrys_is_four_servings.html Serving sizes are based upon what you and your peers eat. If something can reasonably be consumed in one sitting it is is labelled as such. Nipping the whole fat American thing in the bud, Britain and Ireland top the charts for obesity in Europe. It seems as though you think that food business operators don't benefit from down playing the number calories/sugar/salt in their food.
Its not about not understanding, its about making it very easy for someone to overlook a critical multiplier that is typically printed much smaller than the other displayed values. Its about people making the quite reasonable but usually incorrect assumption that the calories displayed on something like a bar that is consumed in one go is for the whole bar and not half of it. Have you never done something like pick up the wrong item, because of a subtle difference in the label? Fizzy water instead of still, semi skimmed milk instead of whole. Glancing at something, thinking you've got it right and overlooking some important detail is a simple enough mistake to make. Manufacturers deliberately take advantage of that. Its not about being stupid, its about obfuscation.
And how's that working for them? http://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/ Labelling be damned, if a food is deemed unhealthy whack a 50% fat tax on it, labelling will always loose in the fight against the lazy.
I've just checked a handful of products in my larder, all clearly labelled and very legible, from bread, pot noodles, chocolate, if people CBA to look then there's no help for them No, never.
Actually, the information (generated in the 70s) is out of date in America, they eat more now than when the data was generated. So just like here, they are seeing smaller portion sizes on the labels than they consume. None the less their approach to labelling is correct. A tax is just a poor band aid. Kids should be learning how to cook from a young age at school. Preparing food is something many of us will do on a daily basis, is a vital skill for remaining healthy in life, yet we are never educated about it. The end result is labelling that has to be dumbed down which can be easily tweaked by manufacturers to suit their goals of selling more crap.
With all due respect, that's a big load of bull, and I've heard it before on another forum I was taught home economics in high school once a week nearly 30 years ago, and here and now in 2015 I find my daughter being taught cooking & nutrition once a week in her high school. I'm going to have to step back now, we're never going to agree, I see nothing wrong with the current system, if consumers want more info there are 101 apps available for that.
Home economics was optional in my school and I chose science and engineering related subjects. Only a fraction of students could actually do home economics anyway. Its good that your daughter is being taught these things in school. Its certainly not as universal as English and Maths.
I used to love doing home ec. I remember making Scotch pancakes, waiting for the bubbles before flipping and seeing it rise. Wonder if we've got the ingredients in at the moment?
Home ec at school for me was a half year with a couple of "dishes" from memory they were Pizza - tasted foul Fruit salad - small fruit pieces in a bowl of water Shortbread - that actually worked There was more emphasis on the coursework itself big A3 sheets (when your a kid A3 is big) a full process etc all carefully coloured in with pencils, was more design tech than actual practical cooking skills. When I was a bit older my mum got me involved with the cooking and baking, my sisters on the other hand, well they still struggled not to burn soup last I heard of them. I think there should be more emphasis at school on cooking, not fancy stuff but stuff you will eat, quick stuff as a no kid will have the patience to make something that takes long to prepare. So simple stuff like a jacket potato, or stir fry both quick an healthy.
At school 'Food Tech' was a 6-week long after-thought shoehorned into the art/design rotation and basically consisted of how to make a tuna sandwich... The time spent on how not maim yourself with a pillar drill was longer than the entire Home Ec/FoodTech/whatever 'lessons'...
As portion size is not standard then what manufacturers put on their labels is meaningless and they are well aware of that fact. These manufacturers are in the business of selling cheap(ish) unhealthy food. Yes we the consumer must assume some responsibility but the food industry spends millions a year on lobbying politicians and the like to insure that any legislation no matter how minor does not adversely affect their profits. But at the end of the day it is far easier to blame the consumer.
