Why 2.5 Servings per Container?
Thursday’s are spicy Chinese chicken salad days at work. Unfortunately, the cafeteria’s soda fountain was out of syrup or something, so I couldn’t get the large 30-ounce pink lemonade I normally have. So instead, I bought a 20-ounce soda in a plastic bottle. You know the kind I mean, the common bottle available in just about every vending machine, in every convenience store, in every Wal-Mart.
I know there’s absolutely no nutritional value in these things, but I happened to glance at the nutritional label anyway. Calories, blah, blah… Carbohydrates, yadda, yadda… Servings per Container, 2.5.
What!? Two and a half servings in a 20-ounce plastic soda bottle?
I thought to myself, “Who in their right mind says to him or herself while creating product packaging that this product is ideal to serve to 2.5 people?”
Well, it turns out it’s the US government’s fault. Serving size used to be up to the discretion of the manufacturer, but now it supposedly represents the amounts people actually consume. The April 2001 revision of Title 21, Volume 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations Chapter 1 Section 101.12, a result of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 (NLEA), states (on page 50) that the serving size, officially called the “reference amount” or the amount “customarily consumed per eating occasion”, of carbonated and non-carbonated beverages is 240 ml or 8 ounces. Twenty ounces is, of course, 2.5 times larger than the 8-ounce governmentally regulated serving size.
Apparently, none of the people who wrote any of that legal code have been anywhere near a restaurant and its never-ending, free-flowing soda fountains. Who really drinks 40% of their bottled Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, or whatever their drink of choice is, and says “OK, I’m done?” Not me!
Of course, maybe that’s why one of my unmet life goals is to get back down under 200 pounds.
