As you know, I am a huge proponent of diet journals. Whether or not you’re trying to lose weight, keeping a detailed log of all your food and beverage choices is an excellent way to adhere to healthy eating. For some reason, no one likes to have to enter “one pint of Cherry Garcia” in their “snacks”. Diet journals keep us honest, keep us accountable, give us real insight into the quality of our diets (vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, carbs) not to mention the quantity (calories, duh). For those who say it’s tedious and burdensome I would agree, but then again so is monitoring my finances but I do that too.
But I’ve blogged about the importance of diet journals before. This is a post about the government.
The government is very concerned about your health, this is why they subsidize corn. We should all be grateful to the government for their positive impact on the nation’s collective diet. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USDA) is responsible for regulating the nutrition panels that appear on all packaged foods and the information the nutrition panels provides goes a long way toward keeping Americans slim and trim.
Then again, maybe not. For several years there has been a consumer outcry (“outcry” may be a strong word, perhaps “strong whisper” by one or two small consumer advocacy groups would be more accurate) for the USDA to set tighter standards for the information — specifically serving sizes — listed on packaged foods. The problem with serving sizes is that there is no USDA standard– the guideline for a serving size of a particular food must be in an amount a person would “customarily consume” at one time.
The problem is that many of the serving sizes listed on our favorite packaged foods are absurd. My favorite example is the Pepperidge Farm Roasted Chicken Pot Pie which lists its calories on the nutrition panel as 510. That sounds reasonable, especially for dinner, right? Sure except for the fact that the serving size is listed as 1 cup while the whole pot pie is 2 cups. This means that the nutrition panel is telling you to split your (small) pot pie into 2 servings. Who do you know that “customarily consumes” one half of a pot pie?
The serving sizes listed on many packaged foods are designed to look good at first glance, especially when it comes to calories or grams of fat. For the shopper who takes a look at the panel before purchasing, 120 calories for a serving of chips seems acceptable. But when you take a closer look and examine the serving size they are often ridiculously small — 2 cookies, 5 crackers, 8 chips. No one eats 5 crackers. No one. Dips and dressings are another problem area. Typically serving sizes are 1 or 2 tablespoons. Two tablespoons is about the size of a golf ball. Enjoy your 8 chips with a golf ball size of dip. I am sure you’ll be very satisfied.
But the real problem is that that most people, even if they do take the time to examine the nutrition panel, fail to notice the serving size (which is what the food producers are hoping). Rather than measuring out 8 chips and 2 tablespoons of dip on a plate, most of us eat until we’re content. We consider a “serving” to be a “sitting”. This is especially problematic when we convince ourselves that our setting was accurately reflected on the nutrition panel. So we enter “one serving” of chips in our diet journal and it reports 120 calories. And then a month later we revisit our diet journal when we fail to lose weight, grow frustrated, and throw in the towel, when in fact our diet journal was never correct to begin with.
The consumer advocacy groups have a point about defining and regulating what exactly constitutes a serving size. If nutrition panels reflected that a small pot pie was 1,020 calories and a typical serving of chips and dip was 850, maybe more people wouldn’t buy them in the first place.
But let’s not wait for the government. We could be waiting a long time. Instead, do this:
1) Measure everything. I’m not saying you have to measure everything for the rest of your life, but spend a week measuring out your food according to the nutrition panel. I will guarantee you that the bowl of cereal you pour in the morning is way more than 1/2 cup. I guarantee that the “tablespoon” of peanut butter is more like 4. Get the measuring cup and spoons out of the drawer and make a commitment to know the exact amount of everything you consume. This includes cooking oils, butter, salad dressings and creamer in your coffee (ouch).
2) Make your log accurate. Now that you actually know how much you’re eating, enter all this information into your diet journal. Your diet journal is only as valuable as the information you input. You have just made it very valuable.
Or, let me provide a third (and in my opinion), much better option. Stop eating food that comes in boxes. The foods that you should be eating don’t have nutrition labels: vegetables, fruits and unprocessed meats. Throw in some nuts and heart healthy oils (sure, you can measure these) and you’ve got yourself a diet that requires no grocery store nutrition panel investigation at all.
Eat less packaged and prepared foods. Eat whole foods. Let the folks at the USDA worry about serving sizes and nutrition panels, the government loves stuff like that.
Mercer Wellness E-Resolve 