Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Gimmicks of Food Labeling

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–74 of 74 posts

Re: The Gimmicks of Food Labeling

#71

Post by arp242 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #55
arp242 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one eats a single grain of rice or a single chip, or can count how many they do eat (certainly in the case of rice). It's a rather silly comparison. A single tic-tac is not that far-fetched, and perhaps more realistic than you might think. In the end, "serving size" is a rather personal thing. And it's misleading, yes, but only by rounding everything down to 0.

> No one eats a single grain of rice or a single chip... Nor a single TicTac, for the most part. I'm sure there's someone out there who does, but it's certainly not standard practice. A box that's full of a food item that's 95% sugar simply shouldn't be able to list itself as zero sugar.

> A box that's full of a food item that's 95% sugar simply shouldn't be able to list itself as zero sugar.

Obviously; we already agreed on that from the start. All that remains is the (IMHO very minor) disagreement whether the information should be listed "per capsule", "per n capsules", or "per n weight unit(s)", or "per box". It seems to me that "per capsule" is by far the easiest for consumers as that's the easiest, but it's really a minor detail.

Re: The Gimmicks of Food Labeling

#73

Post by munchler »

Fricken wrote: post #39

One pet peeve of mine is ice cream being measured by volume. Similar dairy products, such as yogurt, sour cream, and cottage cheese all go by weight. The problem is that cheap ice cream is full of air. The volume is irrelevant unless you know what percentage of that volume is air. Another is food packaging listing the calories by serving size, which is a completely arbitrary amount. So if I want to know how many calo…

How would you propose to list calories, if not by serving size?

Re: The Gimmicks of Food Labeling

#74

Post by lunaticlabs »

arp242 wrote: post #71
ceejayoz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one eats a single grain of rice or a single chip... Nor a single TicTac, for the most part. I'm sure there's someone out there who does, but it's certainly not standard practice. A box that's full of a food item that's 95% sugar simply shouldn't be able to list itself as zero sugar.

> A box that's full of a food item that's 95% sugar simply shouldn't be able to list itself as zero sugar. Obviously; we already agreed on that from the start. All that remains is the (IMHO very minor) disagreement whether the information should be listed "per capsule", "per n capsules", or "per n weight unit(s)", or "per box". It seems to me that "per capsule" is by far the easiest for consumers as that's the easies…

As an American who know lives in Europe, where nutrition facts are labeled per 100g, I disagree. It is far easier for me to compare products and their nutritional value when there's a standardized size (and prices also have to be listed per 100g, so I can compare!). I now find US nutritional (and price) guidelines entirely useless. I just wanted to pass on my own experience, as someone who used to think that it was reasonably done, but sometimes you don't know what you are missing until you experience the alternative.
Post reply on HN