Probably one of the most common nutrition misconceptions I hear has to do with the Nutrition Facts label found on food, particularly when it comes to serving size.
Understanding serving size is important because it informs how you read the rest of the label.
So, let’s jump into this Nutrition 101 topic together and make sure you have the correct information when it comes to reading the Nutrition Facts label.
NUTRITION 101 | SIMPLE NUTRITION COUNSELING
What is a Serving Size?
We often hear the misconception that the serving size is the amount of a food that one person should eat. But that’s not the case at all.
The serving size is determined by how much the FDA thinks people typically consume. It’s not entirely clear to me how the FDA arrived at these amounts, but the important takeaway is that the serving size is NOT:
A recommendation of how much to eat.
A limitation on how much to eat.
A minimum amount to eat.
An encouragement to measure your food.
And the FDA makes this clear themselves.
I think this is important to recognize because the amount you eat at any one time is affected by a lot of things, including:
Your size
Your age
Your activity level
Your metabolism
Your digestion
What you’re eating with it
What you ate earlier that day
What you ate that week
As I often ask my clients, is the serving size meant for an NBA basketball player or someone’s grandmother whose main form of exercise is gardening?
There are a lot of differences in the nutritional needs of these two people. Do you see the problem with turning the serving size into a recommendation?
Someone might not serve themselves enough, or they might eat more than they need, if they view the serving size as the recommended amount.
Another problem we see all the time when serving sizes are treated as recommendations is that they can trigger guilt when someone eats more than the listed amount.
Feeling guilty is not something we believe anyone needs to experience in response to eating. But we see it all the time, and it can feel really bad when someone experiences it.
Food guilt can lead to things like:
Negative self-talk
Binge eating or feeling like you’ve eaten “too much”
Unnecessary restriction the next day
Dieting
These aren’t health-promoting experiences.
That’s why we believe it’s important to address this misinformation and help our clients understand how to use...and how not to use...the Nutrition Facts label.
How to Use (and Not Use) the Nutrition Facts Label
Now that we understand that the serving size is not a recommendation, we can use it in the way we believe is most helpful: as a reference point.
The serving size tells you the amount of food that the rest of the nutrition information on the label is based on.
So, when you look at the serving size, you can see how many grams of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber are in that particular amount of food.
This can be helpful if, for example, you’re trying to determine which cereal has more fiber.
You would start by looking at the serving size listed on each box and making sure you’re comparing similar amounts (or close enough, because in this case, size and shape actually matter!). Then, you can compare how much fiber each cereal contains.
If you like both cereals equally and want to choose based on fiber content, now you know which one has more fiber.
Once you get that cereal home, do you have to eat the serving size?
Right, the answer is no. I’m just checking.
You may need more or less, depending on all the factors we talked about above.
Should You Always Look at the Nutrition Facts Label?
Our answer is no. And we don’t.
We regularly see the negative impact that constantly looking at calories and macronutrients has on an individual’s overall health and well-being.
A nutrition label may help you make more informed choices about certain types of fat if you’re working on lowering your cholesterol, carbohydrate content if you’re dosing insulin, or fiber content if you’re looking for foods higher in fiber, as mentioned earlier.
But we don’t recommend tracking and counting your food as a general rule.
We don’t see the Nutrition Facts label as essential for nourishing yourself well.