The Wisdom of a Serving Size

I normally don’t like to rant, but on Rudd Sound Bites a question arose regarding the use of the word “lean” by Nestle foods to describe their “grab and go” foods like lean pockets or pizza squares. Recently the FDA approved Nestle’s request to allow the word “lean” on the aforementioned foods. What then does any of that have to do with serving size? Well, the arguments used to sway the FDA depended upon a measure very much like the serving size called the Reference Amount Customarily Consumed. What it all conjured up in my mind was the proliferation of “nutri-babel” from government agencies mired in finding paper solutions to the obesity epidemic.

As outlined in the Federal Register Vol. 70 #63 Docket 2004N-0456, a serving of a food is defined as:
“An amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion by
persons 4 years of age or older, which is expressed in a common
household measure that is appropriate to the food.”

There are two fundamental reasons to establish a serving size:

1. To standardize foods for labeling purposes: Not a bad notion as I might want to compare a serving of whole wheat bread to a serving of rye bread. But what if a standard slice of rye is larger than a slice of wheat?

2. To induce healthy portion consumption: Also not a bad notion. In the era of portion distortion might it be instructive to understand what amount constitutes a serving of broccoli? Or hold on there; does serving size really relate to healthy foods? Is it as important to understand a serving size for broccoli as it is for French fries? In the world of macro and micro nutrition, are we really concerned about people eating too much broccoli?

Starting with #1
1. To standardize foods for labeling purposes has been a monumental failure. I hate to always seem to throw cold water on the government’s attempts to standardize and regulate our lives, but in this case it simply isn’t working. Food manufacturers have so manipulated the serving size it has been relegated to the terminology junk pile. Here’s why:

Purchase a common food, a breakfast muffin, and the label reads: 240 cal in 2.5 servings. My muffin it seems is not a complete unit of food. Not only is it not a complete unit, it’s not a single serving, it’s 2.5 servings. But the muffin is without question a discrete unit of food, isn’t it? Taking out my calculator I divide the muffin into servings. If there are 2.5 servings per muffin, then what fraction of the whole represents a serving? The answer isn’t at all easy. First we need either the weight or the volume of the muffin. Using weight, I assume it weighs 6 ounces. The implication then is that 2.4 ounces of the 6 ounce muffin is a serving. In other words, 40% of the muffin is a serving. Without a scale, how might one excise 40% of the muffin to satisfy eating a single serving from the 2.5 serving muffin? Needless to say, the scaling by the manufacturer sought to hide the fact that if you ate the whole muffin, you took in 600 calories. In the end, most people eat the whole muffin.

2. To induce healthy portion consumption and relate nutrition information to an established quantity of food is certainly important. Here again, the public has been the one left out. The government docket cited above is rife with cogitation regarding how much an idealized serving size ought to be. Experts in the field bat at the concept of servings size as a quick means of controlling the obesity epidemic. Please (experts in the field) get a clue. The free market and independent free living people make daily decisions regarding how much they are going to eat—at each sitting. The average person eating the average meal does not consult USDA tables of servings per food item. The only thing served by the serving size cogitations is the self-serving (ego) size of the cogitator. If the government decides that a serving of pizza is one slice weighing 4.5 ounces, what difference does it really make to the average consumer?

Let’s not approach obesity paternalistically. Is it realistic for a government entity to develop a policy regarding food intake and expect the written policy to control individual food intake? Historically, the only way to control individual food intake is to severely limit supply or severely punish the wrongdoers. Or wait, is there a third method? Education? No that wouldn’t work, it’s more important for our children to know the capital of Peru than why essential fatty acids are essential. There’s my rant. I feel better.