My favorite part is when you see shit like “serving size: Half of a candy bar”. Because seriously, who the fuck eats half of a candy bar, then sets it down to come back for more later? Especially when it’s something like a Snickers, which has caramel that would drip all over if you tried to save it.
The FDA allows food manufacturers to determine what a “reasonable” amount for a serving is… But has zero actual guidelines on what makes a serving size reasonable. And since they don’t enforce any actual serving sizes, manufacturers can just use whatever the fuck they want for serving sizes.
In the EU labels have to have a standard measure, either 100 ml (for things normally handled by volume), or 100 g (for things normally handled by weight).
They can also have a serving size, which is not standardized as far as I know (some cereal has serving size of 30 g, some 40 g, and so on).
Best example of this is zero calorie vegatiable oil cooking spray. The serving size is a hilarious 1 second squirt, which contains so few calories that they’re allowed to mark the can as zero calorie.
This is also why zero-calorie sweetener packets are the size they are. They’re allowed to round to the nearest 10, which includes rounding down to 0. So sweetener packets are realistically ~4.75-4.9 calories. That way they’re allowed to call it a “zero calorie” sweetener.
My favorite part is when you see shit like “serving size: Half of a candy bar”. Because seriously, who the fuck eats half of a candy bar, then sets it down to come back for more later? Especially when it’s something like a Snickers, which has caramel that would drip all over if you tried to save it.
The FDA allows food manufacturers to determine what a “reasonable” amount for a serving is… But has zero actual guidelines on what makes a serving size reasonable. And since they don’t enforce any actual serving sizes, manufacturers can just use whatever the fuck they want for serving sizes.
In the EU labels have to have a standard measure, either 100 ml (for things normally handled by volume), or 100 g (for things normally handled by weight).
They can also have a serving size, which is not standardized as far as I know (some cereal has serving size of 30 g, some 40 g, and so on).
Best example of this is zero calorie vegatiable oil cooking spray. The serving size is a hilarious 1 second squirt, which contains so few calories that they’re allowed to mark the can as zero calorie.
This is also why zero-calorie sweetener packets are the size they are. They’re allowed to round to the nearest 10, which includes rounding down to 0. So sweetener packets are realistically ~4.75-4.9 calories. That way they’re allowed to call it a “zero calorie” sweetener.