Pull a box or can of anything out of your pantry or fridge and read the label on the side. There's the rundown of ingredients, where the stuff inside is listed in order of predominance: those used in the greatest amounts are listed first, followed in descending order by the rest. There are usually some warnings, alerting those with specific food allergies that something inside will cause them harm. There is an accounting of the nutrition content of those ingredients, along with a weighting of how far each goes towards a healthy daily diet. And there's a tally of calories, so you know just how much fuel you are putting into your tank.
All of those measurements are based on perhaps the most important number displayed, the serving size. That measure is supposed to be a standardized, common household unit: a cup, a tablespoon, a singular unit. Milk and juice are easy: liquid measures are how we consume those beverages. Other things require a little transposition: peanut butter and mayonnaise are detailed in tablespoons, but we consume them by spreading with a knife. That requires that you have to visualize a rounded blob as stretched out across a flat blade. Some unit-type things make sense: a slice of bread, a container of yogurt. Others are only for the anal-retentive among us: do you count out 12 chips or 4 crackers in a single serving, or do you stick your hand into the bag and grab a bunch? And then there's the can of cooking oil spray, which lists serving size as "1/3 of a second." So if you go Pfft you're good, but if you go Pfffffffttt you are overindulging.
The old labels used to say "recommended" serving size. That recommendation was a based on the findings of a panel of nutritionists who, while they may have been healthy, never obviously took seconds. And so in a nod to reality, the law was changed so that serving sizes are supposed to reflect the amount that people ACTUALLY consume, as opposed to what they SHOULD consume. And those are hardly the same.
In fact, those numbers are adjusted periodically adjusted to reflect changing habits and, well, how fat we are all getting. For instance, servings of frozen yogurt and ice cream have shifted upward from a half cup to two-thirds of a cup. The serving size for toaster pastries, such as Pop Tarts, has been doubled, because who leaves one left in the package-of-two wrapper? And perhaps as a result of the Starbucks-ification of our world, for almost all liquids, starting with coffee and tea but also soda and water, serving size is now assumed to not be "Short" (8 ounces) but "Tall" (12 ounces).
These measures all seem legitimate in some abstract construct, a place like Lake Wobebon on Prairie Home Companion, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." But most of us live in a grittier neighborhood, where things are not so orderly. Since our eating habits are reflective of that world, perhaps it would be more helpful if the serving size notations were more in tune with that.
So instead of the serving size for tortilla chips being listed as "6 chips," maybe "3 handfuls" would be more helpful. Likewise, soda might be noted not as "12 ozs" but "enough to accompany 2 slices of pizza." A time period might work: not "6 crackers" but "as many crackers as you can grab during a commercial break in the game as you pass through the kitchen on the way to the bathroom." We could even include situational references: while the serving size for ice cream might be "2/3 a cup" under normal circumstances, it could note "if you're stuck home on a Saturday night with nothing to do, serving size is this entire container of Chunky Monkey." At least we'd be nodding to reality.
Of course, none of this matters is you don't care, and most of us don't. We eat what we want when we want it, consuming appropriate amounts at some points, and wildly stupid quantities at others. As for me, I am committed to making meaningful changes. So going forward, I will limit my consumption of non-stick spray. From now on, it's just one Pfft for me.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes it when serving size is "entire box." His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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