Be Aware and Beware of Serving Sizes
It’s important to read labels. It can give you so much valuable information and it can help you monitor your food and calorie intake better if you pay attention.
But labels can be tricky! Sometimes manufacturers tend to be misleading with nutritional information or at least they try to show everything in their best light. I remember a really good example of this from a few years back. There was a commercial on TV for a frothy coffee drink to make at home. It looked luscious! Really! So when I went to the grocery store I checked it out. I am an avid reader of labels (and everything else too) so I read the label. It said something like 450 calories. I thought “whew, that’s alot of calories”. For a 2000 calorie a day diet that’s a quarter of your calories right there. But then I looked a little closer, the serving size was 1/4 cup! Now I don’t know about you but I know that 1/4 cup of coffee is like a little taste for me, I would drink a whole cup at the very least and maybe even more. So you add that up, do you know how scary that calorie count is??? 1800 Calories per cup!! That’s an entire day’s worth of calories in one little homemade frothy coffee drink! Needless to say, I didn’t buy it. But I am sure that the manufacturer did not want to show the truth of 1800 calories per cup, (because no one would buy that) so they were hoping to trick you into buying it and hoping you missed the serving size.
There are actually quite a few things like that out there. For instance, some snack size packages of chips or cookies or whatever. Its packaged so that it is logical to eat the entire package. But the “serving size” is 1/3 of a package or 1/2 a bagel or whatever. So it says you are getting something like 150 calories but since you eat the entire package you actually end up consuming 450 calories! Easy way to completely derail your weight loss plans!
So remember to read the serving size when you read the label. That great calorie deal may not really be so great!
