Cut Out the Serving Sizes

Recently, the FDA has taken up the cause of updating serving sizes.  They first came up with standard serving sizes in the 1990s, using data collected on the eating habits of Americans in the 1970s and 1980s.  But that data has become suspect and the FDA wants to revamp the system with more realistic sizes.  After all, who really eats only a handful of chips, half a can of soup, half a muffin, or half a candy bar?  Yet these sizes are what the manufacturers use to determine the numbers they put on the label for calorie and nutritional content.


The thing is, no one pays attention to serving sizes anyway.  I know I don't.  They don't make any sense.  And even if they did, I still wouldn't heed them because I don't like the idea of anyone sanctioning how much I should eat.  That's for my body to decide, not anyone else.  And everyone is different.  No matter how much studying scientists do, they won't be able to create serving sizes that fit everyone's daily habits.  Even if everyone were the same size, we would still eat differently at different times. 

Besides, has the creation of standard serving sizes -- or for that matter, the nutrition label -- really helped us?  It would seem that this country has only gotten much more obese since the launch of all this nutrition label stuff.  Perhaps the FDA should consider that all this is just TMI (too much information), and we were all a lot better off when we didn't know the number of calories we ate, and relied instead on our bodies to make the right decisions for us.  That's because people don't realize they can't rely on their conscious minds to do everything for them.  Sometimes, your body knows better than you.  And if we could trust our bodies, we would all be a lot better.  After all, it's the TV commercials influencing our consciences that make us crave junk food in the first place. 

But I digress.  The point I wanted to make here is that we don't need serving sizes.  And we really should just do away with them.  No one pays attention to them and they seem to do more harm than good. 

What would make more sense is to use cup sizes as the standard.  In most cases, people eat about a cup of food or drink.  If they eat more, they can multiply the numbers listed on the label to figure out their nutritional content, and if they eat less, divide them.  What's more, nearly everyone has a measuring cup to measure their food if they so wish to be exact, and everyone has an idea how much a cupful of food is. 

And this way, no one will feel like anyone is recommending how much they should eat.  That's the problem with serving sizes, after all.  Make them too big, and it seems like you're advocating people eat more.  Make them too small, and people overeat because they underestimate the calorie content.  So why not not recommend anything?  Let people think for themselves.  Let them know how much is in a cup and let them take it from there.