Ask the nutritionist: what's happened to serving sizes?

Vegetarian Times, May, 2005 by Katherine Tallmadge

Q: I see lots of food--chips, sodas, even soups--that are clearly meant for one person, but their labels say they contain two or even three servings. What's going on?

A: You're right, many food and drink labels are misleading. But, hopefully, change is in the air. "Consumers deserve to be able co see at a glance the amount of calories, fat or sugar in what they logically assume is a single-serving container," says Michael E Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Washington, DC-based consumer group. So last December, the CSPI petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to update its labeling rules and make this happen. The group believes that oversized sodas, candy bars and other foods may well be feeding the obesity epidemic.

Here's a classic example: the 24-ounce bottle of Coke. The label says it contains three 100-calorie servings, but most people drink the whole bottle single-handedly and get all 300 calories in one sitting.

And as you correctly point out, soda is hardly the only culprit. Small 2- or 3-ounce packages of pretzels, corn chips, cookies, candy, even some large store-bought salads carry labels that indicate they contain more than one serving even though they're clearly intended for just one person.

How did this happen? Serving sizes haven't changed. Containers have. Just think of the standard soft drink from a vending machine: It's now 20 ounces, compared to the 12-ounce sodas from a few years ago. There was a time when most small bags of potato chips were 1-ounce bags, which had about 150 dories. While some companies still make them, most small bags of potato chips today are 2-3 ounces, which contain 2-3 servings--and at least twice as many calories.

The CSPI wants today's supersized soft drinks, snack packs and foods that aren't easily shared (bagels, muffins) to have labels that give nutrition info for the entire package. Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has asked companies to relabel their products voluntarily, and some have. For instance, Kraft's Ritz Chips now lists the nutrition information for a single serving and for the entire package.

Last year, the FDA said that it would announce new single-serving labeling regulations by late 2004. That hasn't happened yet, and it's unclear when new rules will be issued on this whole confusing topic. Stay tuned.

Q: I see various acronyms--RDA, DRI, DV--on vitamin bottles and food labels, but I'm not certain what they mean. Is there just one t should pay attention to?

A: I asked Linda Meyers, director of the Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, to answer this.

* RDA stands for Recommended Dietary Allowance. "I generally tell consumers to be most attentive to the RDAs," says Meyers. They are the average daily level of nutrients considered necessary for us to meet our nutrition requirements, as recommended by the Food and Nutrition Board. The government uses these recommendations for various purposes, such as generating school lunch policies.

Different RDAs exist for particular ages, life stages (like pregnancy) and genders. If you're getting your RDAs for specific nutrients, it's very unlikely you'll develop a deficiency. However, the RDA hasn't been pinned down yet for every nutrient. Potassium, for example--even though it's an essential mineral--still doesn't have one.

When the RDA doesn't exist, you'll see another acronym: AI (Adequate Intakes). It represents how much experts believe is at least adequate.

* DRI stands for Dietary Reference Intakes. It's an umbrella term that includes the RDAs, AIs and other data used by nutritionists. The DRIs also include the UL (Tolerable Upper Intake Level), which represents the maximum amount you should take of any nutrient. However, like the RDAs, ULs haven't been established for every vitamin and mineral.

* DV stands for Daily Value. These values, which appear on nutrition panels, were proposed in 1990 by the FDA to help consumers compare the amount of nutrients in a particular food to the total amount they need daily. DVs exist for vitamins, fats, minerals, proteins and carbohydrates.

Some of the DVs on labels need to be updated, based on new research by the Institute of Medicine. Effort is underway by the FDA to revise the DV data on nutrition labels.

Katherine Tallmadge, MA, RD, is the author of Diet Simple: 192 Mental Tricks, Substitutions, Habits & Inspirations. She once mistakenly bought a 2-oz. package of potato chips and was surprised to realize--halfway through--that it was more than one serving.

look BEFORE YOU EAT: EVEN SOME SMALL CONTAINERS HAVE MORE THAN ONE SERVING