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While nutrition and food labelling is in the news, here's a thread about the nutrition information labels which are required to appear on prepacked food in the UK, and how they can be manipulated with increasingly absurd definitions of a "serving". Examples follow...
This standard format is supposed to show at a glance what you're getting. Sometimes it's colour coded red, amber and green.
One Twirl gives you 15% of your reference saturates intake, right? No, it's 30%, because - aha! - those figures are PER FINGER of a two-finger Twirl.
One Twirl gives you 15% of your reference saturates intake, right? No, it's 30%, because - aha! - those figures are PER FINGER of a two-finger Twirl.
Why? Either (1) Cadbury thinks that when anyone buys a Twirl, they eat one of the fingers then re-wrap the other one for tomorrow, or (2) they found a cheap way to halve those pesky fat and sugar amounts they're required to print. Who can say which? WE WILL NEVER KNOW.
Look in your kitchen cupboard, you'll find this nonsense everywhere.
Go Ahead Yogurt Breaks! They come in five individually-wrapped packs. "Only 71 kcal! [whispered voice] (per slice)." Each of those individually-wrapped packs is two slices. You have to remember to double it.
![Look in your kitchen cupboard, you'll find this nonsense everywhere.Go Ahead Yogurt Breaks! They come in five individually-wrapped packs. "Only 71 kcal! [whispered voice] (per slice)." Each of those individually-wrapped packs is two slices. You have to remember to double it.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeHJKv_XYAYsSqB.jpg "Look in your kitchen cupboard, you'll find this nonsense everywhere.Go Ahead Yogurt Breaks! They come in five individually-wrapped packs. \"Only 71 kcal! [whispered voice] (per slice).\" Each of those individually-wrapped packs is two slices. You have to remember to double it.")
Go Ahead Yogurt Breaks! They come in five individually-wrapped packs. "Only 71 kcal! [whispered voice] (per slice)." Each of those individually-wrapped packs is two slices. You have to remember to double it.
Sticking with Go Ahead, here are some Crispy Slices. 55 kcal per slice. Aha, so that's really 110, right? No. Each pack is three slices, so you have to remember to TREBLE it. So it's not 4.6g of sugar like it says on the outer packet, it's 13.8g.
If one serving really is one slice, why wrap them in groups of two or three? Why not single packs or no sub-wrapping at all? Do the maths for us and print the real figures, or accept you're trying to mislead and hoping we won't read the small print. Next up...
... this Batchelors pasta stuff. This isn't even a multipack of anything, so you see the nutrition label and assume it gives you 18% of your reference intake of salt. Look again. It says "per 1/2 pack". You have to remember to double it. 36% of your day's salt, right there.
That last one is especially outrageous because even their own cooking instructions don't cater for anything other than cooking it all at once. It's worth noting that a salt figure of 36% would be red, not amber. Perhaps whoever decided what a "serving" was realised that?
However, it's not all bad. No such nonsense from Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. The latter is sub-packaged into packs of two inside, but they don't try to get away with saying you're supposed to eat one now and one tomorrow morning. Good job, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. [end rant]
![However, it's not all bad. No such nonsense from Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. The latter is sub-packaged into packs of two inside, but they don't try to get away with saying you're supposed to eat one now and one tomorrow morning. Good job, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. [end rant]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeHLvxSXgAA2RhU.jpg "However, it's not all bad. No such nonsense from Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. The latter is sub-packaged into packs of two inside, but they don't try to get away with saying you're supposed to eat one now and one tomorrow morning. Good job, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. [end rant]")
![However, it's not all bad. No such nonsense from Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. The latter is sub-packaged into packs of two inside, but they don't try to get away with saying you're supposed to eat one now and one tomorrow morning. Good job, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. [end rant]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeHLwMoX0AAVHWU.jpg "However, it's not all bad. No such nonsense from Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. The latter is sub-packaged into packs of two inside, but they don't try to get away with saying you're supposed to eat one now and one tomorrow morning. Good job, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat. [end rant]")
