Not saying I live a healthy lifestyle. In general, though I actively avoid McDs style fast food, I don’t eat too much salad, don’t watch calories, do eat pizzas, and don’t really keep active. Been doing a bit of Krav for a year and a few months but got lazy recently and quit. Having said that, my weight’s been roundabout constant for the last 5 years. Oh and I don’t smoke. I drink a bit though, socially of course.
New year, is widely known as the time of the year to make promises we don’t keep. Because of this, I don’t even bother, but many people have the urge to start getting active and thus [hope to] look less fat. (remember the ad, which said “ugly and fat? join the gym and just be ugly!“)
Naturally, there are loads of companies, usually the food industry of course that tries to tell people that by having a balanced diet (as in eat loads of crap, and balance it out with eating photons), one can completely avoid the annoyance of having to get active and move those bums.
What specifically prompted me to write this article was the ad pictured on the left, basically an expensive piece of fruit juice (£1.70 for 250ml) made by Innocent. While I don’t have anything against premium priced products, I find the idea of a fruit juice, which has a lot of naturally occurring sugars in it as the way to beat obesity, slightly odd. I know, balanced diet. Balanced, yes, it has 2 of your “five a day'”-s, and 25% of your daily sugar RDA. Yet, don’t you think it’s a bit amusing?
The food lobby perhaps isn’t as powerful in the UK as it is in the USA, but some changes in legislation would still not go astray in this country either. One of my anti-favourites is the serving size of chilled and frozen products. A 600g soup (mostly water) contains 2 servings. A 550g ready meal contains 1 serving. A 370g pizza is 2 servings, though I’ve seen nutri info relating to a quarter of a pizza as well. Confusing? An official serving size for corn flakes and similar products is around 30-50g, plus a bit of milk. I think my stock-standard breakfast bowl fits a pint (UK pint, 568ml). Still not confused?
Nutritional values are usually displayed as per serving (or in worse cases, per 100g, if at all) on packagings, therefore whoever takes the time to actually read those values and attempt to calculate the proportion of RDA they’re getting upon consuming the product in question must do a bit of calculating on-the-fly to get to the proper values. Add this to the ongoing Sainsbury’s and Tesco promotions, where you can get a “Meal for one” deal, with a main (400g ready meal), a side (mostly a garlic bread, reasonably large), and a dessert (some sweet stuff of course). If a half container of soup is a serving, then what is a three-course meal? 6 servings? How is that in line with what’s on the back of the packaging?
Without trying to be bitching constantly, I think there are organisations that collect large amounts of data on grocery purchasing and consumption habits (such as Kantar Worldpanel, most of all). In an ideal world, these companies should be consulted when establishing what a proper serving size is. I would guess, that there are proportionately few people who have a half pack of microwaved soup as a starter, followed by a half serving of ready meal or a quarter of pizza. Especially because most people are in a dash to finish @ work, so in essence, whatever is in the packaging really becomes one serving. Something to keep in mind perhaps.
Viktor's Random Posts 