All That and a Bag of Chips

Sunday, December 19, 2010


I’m easily amused by the ‘nutrition facts’ labels on food packaging.  Some of them are so funny that I think they would get bigger laughs in the comics section of the newspaper than on the side of a box.  Serving size, servings per package, they’re all just a bunch of guidelines conjured up by white-coat dietitians in an office.  Does anyone really pay attention to the serving size anyway?

I got one of my biggest laughs while eating from a bag of caramel flavored rice cakes.  I don’t even know why they call them rice cakes. They’re more like an amalgam of a chip and a flavored air reservoir.  The back packaging says that the serving size is eight mini cakes.  Are you kidding me?  Eight pieces just barely begins to whet my appetite.  Who has time to count?  .  What it doesn’t say on the package is how long after eating the eight mini cakes, can I eat another eight mini cakes?  Is it 15 minutes, an hour?  I really think they need to include this kind of information.  And what about all the crumbs and partial pieces that are at the bottom of the bag?   They don’t even talk about those, so I don’t count those as part of my “serving.”

And don’t get me started on Oreos.  They are another one of my weaknesses; and as much as I love them, I try not to ever have them in our house.  They say that three cookies equal one serving.  I don’t know about you, but as long as the pack of Oreos is in front of me, I’ll keep eating them.  With them, it’s like, “Serving Size: Yes, go ahead and eat all of them.” 

What I probably need, is to find is a box of self control.  I’m sure I could use a few of those servings in my diet.  I could sneak them in onto my daily caloric schedule somewhere in between the rice cakes, the Oreos and - OK, I’ll admit it: the Lucky Charms. 

4 comments :

Ellen December 21, 2010 at 6:18 AM  

I thought I was the only one.

Jeff December 21, 2010 at 8:11 AM  

Funniest thing ever written...
On the side of a Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Servings per container...4
HAHAHAHA!!!

Britton Minor December 30, 2010 at 6:36 AM  

I had a recent foray into ingredient obsession: bought a cookie that claimed to have high quality "natural" ingredients but didn't. The short crux, and my favorite part of communicating with the company via email with Selma's Kitchen was this in response to tag line on the company website about making cookies the old fashioned way: ME: Really, Selma's very own grandmother used to take out a giant vat of processed, trans-fat, hydrogenated oil and make a quick batch??

Britton Minor December 30, 2010 at 6:39 AM  

note to self: always choose "PREVIEW" before posting comments...helps avoid embarrassing mistakes.


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