The term serving or serving size means an amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion by persons 4 years of age or older which is expressed in a common household measure that is appropriate to the food.
This means manufacturer's are free to make serving sizes based on how little a hypothetical four year old child might eat in theory. There aren't any substantial penalties for inaccuracy. There can be substantial incentives for optimistic labeling.
Just as a counterpoint, in Europe the requirement is to specify nutrition data per 100 g of "usable" product. Some products are e.g. intended to be added to water before consumption, then the nutrition is for that final form, not for the concentrate that you actually buy.
But it's really practical, it makes it dead easy to e.g. compare calories, sugar, fat and so on between e.g. milk and apple sauce (to take random example from the breakfast table this morning).
> in Europe the requirement is to specify nutrition data per 100 g of "usable" product
Source? that doesn't seem true and seems prone to the same serving size tricks used in US. My experience it that nutritional values per 100g of product (actual raw product no matter what its final form is supposed to be) are always listed first.
Then if you're supposed to mix it with water there can be e.g., optionally, a nutritional table per 100ml of finished product.
I'm not sure, whether you both are talking about the same thing. But, it's some kind of true and, as you said, not true..
One get the information for 100g of the product and also, most of the times, one get the nutrition information of a typical serving size of the final product.
So, if you buy a Snickers, the contents are listed per 100g and also for the weight of that one bar of Snickers (e g
70g). Or, when the product is to be mixed, the nutrition information is given for the amount of the product needed for mixing a serving size. It's a psychological trick, when the product is much less then 100g, or little more, the consumers are tricked into perceiving less sugar and less whatever.. but yes, it's not mandatory but rather a decision of marketing.
~It's true.~ Edit: sorry I misread the previous comment. It's 100g "as sold". Not "as prepared".
> All the information must be expressed per 100g or per 100ml. It may also, in addition, be expressed per portion or per consumption unit of the product.
That doesn't say anything. It just says it may be more convenient to express data per 100 ml if you have a liquid product.
Can you cite the article where it says you can express nutritional data with respect to a final form of the product you mix yourself and not list the per 100g/100ml data? I'm still very skeptic but would be quite interesting if that was really allowed.
Anecdotally, I am used to seeing the prepared nutrition values for certain food types here in Norway (which is aligned with EU regulation through EEA). It is quite common, and not always acompanied by values for raw unprepared product.
From Article 31:
"Where appropriate, the information may relate to the food after preparation, provided that sufficiently detailed preparation instructions are given and the information relates to the food as prepared for consumption."
I'm quite surprised as it adds ambiguity and complexity and leaves a backdoor open for playing with serving sizes and dilutions. I mean they could list the instructions for a diluted final product that makes the values look good but the actual preparation everyone does is way more concentrated.
Fortunately it doesn't seem that exploited if not for very specific products.
You're correct that the requirement is for 100g/100ml "as sold" not "as prepared". The other commenter is incorrect.
So milk powder, for example, would have a mandatory nutrition label showing 100g of powder and then the company can optionally add a second label showing nutrition for a serving of prepared liquid milk.
Since most companies add whatever serving makes it look best it becomes habitual to filter out the serving size info.
If anyone wants to dive further into this it's EU regulation 1169/2011 Annex 1.
Apologies from me, see tikkosam comment, it seems true indeed. There is an exception that allows this practice in article 31. My trust in EU regulations took a tiny hit today.
> seems prone to the same serving size tricks used in US
I've only noticed it on what we call "squash", or fruit juice concentrate. When I was a kid, the labels would say 1 part concentrate to 6 parts water, and we'd do it about 1 to 4. Now, we've gone through double concentrate and a lot are "4x" now, but e.g. the bottle in front of me says "typical values per 100ml (diluted 1 part with 19 parts water)" and a serving size of 250ml (which actually provides more precision than the per 100ml value). I think these standard serving sizes are defined somewhere, as I think it's always 250ml for every kind of drink that comes from a large container, and either the exact quantity or an integer division of it for things that come in smaller containers, e.g a 330ml can.
The way it handles quantities is interesting. When is seems to mean trace, it uses "<0.1g" as distinct from a small amount where it uses "<0.5g". Sugars are listed as "0.5g" in the 250ml serving and "<0.5g" per 100ml. Fibre and protein are "<0.5g" everywhere, and fat is the weird one as it says "<0.5g per 250 ml, of which saturates <0.1g, mono-unsaturates <0.1g, polyunsaturates <0.1g".
Finally, you can be pretty sure of the actual composition due to the calories, listed as 15kJ or 4 kcal per 250ml (use the kJ puts this at 3.5-37kcal per 250ml). Knowing that sugar is 3.87kcal per 1g, protein is 4.0kcal per 1g and fat is 898kcal per 1g (most people approximate per gram to 4 for carbs+protein and 9 for fat). So for the 0.5g of sugar, that's approx 2kcal, so there's either about 0.4g of protein or about 0.2g of fat or somewhere in-between. Just from what's in the juice, I expect the "missing calories" are mostly protein.
Obviously, none of that tells you anything about lactose (except that it's fruit juice and there's no reason why it would contain any).
Ingredients rather than final foods typically specify nutrition "per 100g as sold" and invent a serving side either by telling you how to prepare it (e.g. OXO gravy cubes say to dissolve 1 cube in 190ml of water for 2 servings) or invent some arbitrary serving size like 5g for a condiment. This seems in line with what you've seen, but definitely squash that is intended to be diluted doesn't do that (at least in the UK, and for the squash I buy).
Same here in Australia. It's crazy that in the US you have to work out how big a "serving" is and do a bunch of math to work out how much sugar is in something.
Plus the placebo effect which is the only reason you get instant energy from any kind of energy drink. Even pure liquid sucrose takes at least 30 minutes to digest (aside from a negligible amount that's digested in the mouth.
There's some interesting studies that show energy gain during a workout from just rinsing your mouth with an energy drink and not swallowing any.
At least 30 minutes, apparently. Any effect you feel before that is placebo.
Which shouldn't be read as "not real". The placebo effect means that actual physiological changes are happening in your body, they have just been initiated by your PNI system rather than the the substance.
No, "usable" product cannot be quite the correct expression. The macros per 100g of dry pasta are for the dry, not the cooked product. I'd venture to guess that few people eat their pasta dry.
Not sure how to express it then, but on the other hand beverages sold as concentrate and mixed with water before drinking ("cordials" in English, I think) seem less common elsewhere so perhaps it's a local/Swedish thing and not a very good thing to focus on at all. :)
[1]: Like https://orklafoodsrs.se/produkt/454051626, scroll down and the nutritional info ("Näringsvärde") is right there and it's clearly the diluted drinkable version, not the concentrate.
Someone else dug up what is probably the correct answer: "Where appropriate, the information may relate to the food after preparation, provided that sufficiently detailed preparation instructions are given and the information relates to the food as prepared for consumption."
And it's really confusing for someone like me who is tracking calories
Iirc it was even worse because it was for a bag of dehydrated potatoes that used a mix of water and milk on the recipe.
Another example was noodles, it is sometimes said for 100ml of finished product (at this point tell me the calories for the entirety of the pack or 100gr of it)
That's also why cooking spray, which is 100% fat, can be advertised as having 0 grams of fat. Because 1/3 of a second of spray, the serving size, has less than the minimum amount of fat you need to declare.
The term serving or serving size means an amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion by persons 4 years of age or older which is expressed in a common household measure that is appropriate to the food.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B...
This means manufacturer's are free to make serving sizes based on how little a hypothetical four year old child might eat in theory. There aren't any substantial penalties for inaccuracy. There can be substantial incentives for optimistic labeling.