Food labelling sucks. I’m not talking about all the crap that gets put into food that is listed in such small print you need Ant-Man to read it for you. Even the basic information like calories is really misleading.
Background
I’m fat. It’s not my hormones or anything else. I eat too much. What you feed a family, I will quite happily eat for myself. For the amount I eat, I’m surprised I’m not even fatter.
A few months ago the doctor suggested I go on some drugs to lose weight. You know the kind of things I’m talking about, because they are very “in fashion” at the moment. Losing weight would definitely help some of my other medical conditions, so I totally understand why they would suggest that.
The issue I have with this is I’m in my mid fifties, and the muscle and bone density I would likely lose as a result of these drugs would result in a worse outcome for me than just eating like a human, rather than a garbage compacter. Rather than take more drugs I’m trying to put my garbage compacter days behind me.
Over the last few months I’ve been eating a normal volume of food and I’ve lost a lot of weight. Enough that a number of people have commented. I’ve got some way to go, but the movement is in the right direction.
This is the background to my current gripe.
Calories
I come from a science background and believe in “calories in vs calories out”. I know that if I eat less calories than I expend I lose weight. I know if I drop the calories too far I lose weight really quickly, but it is hard to sustain. If I stay on a smaller calorie deficit I drop the weight more slowly, but I don’t feel like I’m suffering.
The other nice thing about tracking calories is there are no foods that are banned. I just have to make sure at the end of the day I hit my target. If I really fancy something, I have it. I just have to juggle things to allow for it.
Although I still get cravings, I find myself making better choices over time, because I know calorie dense foods will mean eating less volume of food in total, and I will feel really hungry later.
If you use some other methods to lose weight and it’s working for you, that’s great news and keep doing it! For me, logging my calories into MyFitnessPal works. If I eat too much one day, I eat a bit less the next couple of days to balance it out. It’s the only way to keep myself honest and not kid myself it’s not my fault.
So back to the subject of this post.
Food label obfuscation
It really gets on my nerves how dishonest food labels are. They don’t explicitly lie, but they make it so hard to make accurate judgements. I’m a huge fan of noodles, and all noodles have crap labelling. Here’s an example of the calorie information on the label of my favourite brand.
- Per 100g (as prepared) = 109 kcals
- Per serving (as prepared) = 76 kcals
Clearly a packet is a single serving right? Nobody would eat less than a packet of them right? Well, after some digging I found that per packet, which makes a small bowl of noodles, the calories are 322 kcals. So the portion size they are suggesting is about a quarter of one little packet. I know I’m a fatty, but that portion size is crazy.
It’s clear the real portion size is one packet per person, so why not put on the label it is 322 kcals per packet? Well then people would feel bad about eating 2-3 packs each, which is what I want to do. 🙂
This type of labelling is clearly designed to deceive consumers into thinking the food is low calorie, when it is not. I’ve googled my favourite brand of noodles and I can see loads of people misquoting the calories as 76, when it should be 322.
Portion sizes
In the previous section I was also making a comment about portion sizes, but it came from the angle of obscuring the calorie information, so I had to dig to find out what the portion size meant. In this section I want to talk about products that clearly mention ridiculous portion sizes.
Cereals have been a long-time annoyance to me. I rarely eat them as they are just a bowl full of carbs, but the portion sizes on them are laughable. Depending on the cereal, they will often have a serving size of 30-40g. Get a food scale and measure 40g of cereal and look at it. There is no way an adult eats 40g of cereal.
Sometimes labels give nutritional information including the milk, but sometimes they won’t.
The point is, the portion sizes they recommend are in no way equivalent to what people are eating. Even thin people. My nephews are like skinned rabbits and they easily eat 4 times this per bowl.
It’s so easy to read the label and think you are getting 100 calories, when you may be getting four or five times that, even if you don’t count the milk.
You are being set up to lose
I think food labelling makes it so hard to keep a track of what you are eating.
I hear people saying stuff like, “I’ve tried every diet and I just can’t lose weight”, and they really believe it. If you are not losing weight, you have to eat less. Exercise is a bonus, and good for general health, but you can’t exercise off a bad diet, unless you are running marathons every day. Normal people will only lose weight by eating less calories, however they manage to do it. For you it might be paleo/carnivore, for someone else it might be vegan. However you get there, you are eating on a calorie deficit to lose weight.
Not giving people information in an easy and honest manner is setting them up for failure. We should not expect people to no-life on the internet to find out that it’s 322 calories, not 76 calories, in their noodles.
Overall
Try to be sceptical of food labels. In the early days it pays to weigh things until you get a good eye for portions. If you start to gain weight, or stop losing weight, start measuring again to retrain your portion control.
Also, try to think of the positives. I’m saving so much on food bills that I can nearly afford the ridiculous money I pay for cat food. 🙂
If you are on a health journey, good luck!
Cheers
Tim…
