An article written by Anahad O'Connor in the New York Times, The Problem With Serving Sizes, discusses the FDA and its efforts to get food manufacturers to change their serving sizes and nutritional content on their food labels to a more realistic serving that Americans typically eat.
Parts of this article, I agree with. For example, have you ever read the food label on a can of soup? The majority of soup cans contain 2-2.5 servings, but typically, when someone has a can of soup for lunch, they eat the whole can. The next culprit is cooking spray. Technically, a serving size is a spray that lasts about 1/4 of a second, but I don't know anyone who uses that little amount, unless it's in a cupcake tin. I think it would be reasonable for the serving size of soup to be changed to one serving per can, and for the serving size of cooking spray to be changed to a spray that lasts at least a few seconds, and adjust all nutritional content accordingly.
But here is where I have to disagree with O'Connor. O'Connor explains that "critics say these so-called reference amounts are often laughably small because they’re based in part on surveys of eating behavior that were carried out in the 1970s, when Americans ate less food and portions had not been supersized" (para. 3). But when you think about it, isn't the fact that our portions are supersized the root of the problem?
O'Connor states that in a pint of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, there are four servings, and that when it comes to Oreos, "a serving is a paltry three cookies" (para. 2). Is there really ANY reason why someone needs to eat an entire pint of ice cream or more than three Oreos in one sitting? I understand that people do it, but if we increase the serving size to appease them, aren't we only condoning and even encouraging those bad eating habits?
