This was my type of weather. No sun to glare in my eyes, a little rain to cool and clean up the air, and a breeze to blow through my open windows. A rare day. A great day to cook. That's what made the day so rare. Cook is a four letter word to me so I usually stay away from that activity, but spaghetti was on my mind and spaghetti I was going to make. I called up three friends and told them that they were invited to my apartment for a meal.
Everything that I needed was in the kitchen, so all I had to do was boil some water and heat up a jar of spaghetti sauce. I found a pound of spaghetti on the shelf and poured it into the bubbling water. Stirring the spaghetti is boring so I started to read the label on the spaghetti box. I glanced at the servings per container and the label said that each pound box served eight people. Eight people? I thought my eyeglasses had a smudge on it. Something had to be wrong. One pound of spaghetti can feed eight hungry adults? Not possible. The label didn't change when I looked again.
I usually read labels on the food products that I buy, but I'm looking for sodium, fat, carbohydrates, and things like that. I rarely, if ever, look at serving sizes.
On my next trip to the grocery store I started examining the serving sizes of the products that I was buying. According to the label, a six ounce can of tuna fish serves two and a half people. How is it then that I can eat a can of tuna for lunch and not feel terribly full? And who is this half person that they're always talking about?
I'm not sure that the strange portion size is for the public's health guidelines. I think that the manufacturers of these products want to look good. But telling the buying public that a portion of food has only five grams of fat when a portion is only two ounces seems dishonest. Who is really going to separate out one portion of one can of tuna fish, and store the other serving and a half away? If you eat only two ounces of tuna there is no way you are not going to ask yourself - what's next to eat?
Food labels have to be more truthful to the consumers. Selling a product on the basis that a single serving is low in calories and fat when in fact no one consumes a single serving, is unreasonable. Instead of expecting us to divide a can of tuna into two and a half servings, what's wrong with a little truth? Labels should give the full amount of calories, fat grams, sodium and carbohydrate per package of each product. Let us do the math for a single portion. The numbers will be higher, and maybe the product won't look as wonderful, but at least the consumer won't be fooled.
As for my little dinner, well, four people ate the full pound of spaghetti, no matter what the label said, and there were no left overs.
