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Truth in Advertising
As we were getting ready for lunch today, I was thinking about food labels.
It seems to me that we would be far better off if, in addition to telling us how many calories per serving, we were also told the number of calories for the entire package.
For example, the guacamole I was eating says 45 calories per serving. However, far more useful is the information that I were to eat the entire container myself (assuming that Michael didn’t get a chip in when I wasn’t looking) I would have consumed 382.5 calories. Which, incidentally, made me feel a whole lot better. I mean, wouldn’t that be a great bit to add? “Even if you eat this entire container, you’d still be getting fewer calories than if you ate a Big Mac.”
Unfortunately, as Michael pointed out, if you are the entire container of guacamole AND the entire bag of tortilla chips AND the whole two liter of ginger ale, that would be more than 2000 calories, and you wouldn’t be able to eat anything else for the rest of the day.
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June 26th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Yeah, I’d like that too if they’d put the package calories on the label–but then I wonder if I wouldn’t eat an entire container of something in a sitting when I wouldn’t otherwise…?
(On things that usually get consumed in one sitting anyway, I think they should be required to list the package calories as well as the single serving calories. But then I guess what I would eat in one sitting someone might save half of for later…hmmm.)
June 26th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Well, that’s kind of my point. If you have BOTH sets of information–a single serving and the entire container–it might help you to make a better decision. If I drink this entire liter of soda, I’ll be getting 1000 calories. Maybe I should only drink half. I mean, putting 2 1/2 servings on a bottle of soda that is clearly for one person to drink is stupid.
And I think seeing the entire calorie count might help dissuade some people from eating/drinking the whole thing. Assuming that they’re looking anyway.
But I really was surprised about the guacamole, and felt far less guilty about eating as much as I normally do (which was not, incidentally, the entire container, though I did consider it.)
June 30th, 2006 at 1:58 am
If you’ve noticed, they’re starting to do that now. McDonalds has them, Dorito’s, Coke, they all have them — they’re the second column (you may have noticed the text is getting smaller — this is why).
July 1st, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Ah… I don’t eat fast food (See: Eric Schlosser–Fast Food Nation), and if I get soda it’s either 2-liter bottles or else those tiny bottles, so I hadn’t noticed.