What's in a serving?

Kids should eat a variety of healthy foods. I don't think you'll be able to find anyone outside of a large processed food company's lab who will argue. So, of course, legislators are spending quite a bit of time an energy trying to make kids food healthier.

The government wants to limit the amount of sugar in products aimed at kids (using cartoon characters) to no more than 8 grams per serving. The food industry is suggesting that they voluntarily limit that amount to 10 grams per serving. What's missing is any talk about the serving size.

When you look at a food label, such as on the side of a cereal box, at the top you'll find the product's serving size. A cereal that I often enjoy lists the serving size as 1 cup. And therein lies the problem. It's not regulated.

I'll pour cereal into a bowl until it looks like the amount I want to eat, which is somewhere around 2 cups. Then I'll add milk. On the side of the cereal box I should have 1/2 cup milk per serving. That's pretty dry cereal. Of course I add more.

Now watch a cereal commercial. A kid will pour cereal from the box into a bowl and more or less fill it. He or she does not find a measuring cup and make sure only to pour one serving.

No matter what limit on sugar is passed, 8 or 10 grams per serving, a cereal maker only has to reduce their serving size to meet it. Today, the side of the box may say 1 cup of cereal with 10 grams of sugar. Tomorrow, that can be changed to 3/4 cup of cereal with 7.5 grams of sugar. Either way, a full cereal bowl is much more than that.

Another example is a small bag of chips, like you might have with lunch. Look at the number of servings listed in the bag. I was recently surprised to find a major brand said that there were 1.5 servings in a bag. Who doesn't finish that little bag of chips?

The serving size often does not correspond to how much a person might eat at one time. Limiting the amount of sugar in a serving is great, but only if the serving is the actual amount that an average child may eat.