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Comment by Hamcha | Hacker News Reader

Always found the "X per serving" stupid, servings almost never match the actual consumption. Don't know if it's a Europe law or per-state, but in Italy everything has to list nutritional info per 100g(or ml if it's liquid), and tic-tacs correctly show their average of 2 calories per candy[1]. It also is a wakeup call to how heavy snacks are, a can of Pringles is almost 900 calories even though they'd prefer you use their serving size of 30g (about 13 chips)

1. https://images.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/400/840/039...

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The US has started implementing an even simpler system. Any foods that are packaged in a way that could plausibly be consumed in a single serving must list the nutrition facts for the whole container.

e.g. https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/wp-content/upl...

I think this should be expanded to larger packaging sizes than it currently is. I think that currently only the shorter Pringles cans are affected by this new regulation in the US.

Listing the ingredients per 100g is better, because you can compare different products.

It is the law in Europe (I think) and it's the only sensible solution.

Per 100g doesn't make it easy to compare a bag of chips to a can of soda.

Unless you carry around a food scale to measure out all your snacks, I fail to understand why 100g^-1 is useful.

I would however be interested in a pie chart that displays the calories from different macros. Then tic tac would be 100% sugar and you could compare to soda, also 100% sugar, or chips, which are maybe 65% fat and 5% protein and 30% carbs.

I don't mean to be snarky, but there's always a weight listed on stuff, I think that removes the requirement for carrying a food scale?

Sure, but now we're back to the current US system, where you have to multiply or divide by the amount in the container (either servings per container, or grams per container) to make sense of the measurement.

Standardizing to 100g doesn't actually make it easier to compare foods, because I don't know how 100g of popcorn compares to 100g of chocolate or 100g of soup. It just doesn't mean anything to me.

Just list the amount in the container.

From my experience, it does make it easier if you need to compare similar foods.

For example, I want to buy a yogurt with highest amount of protein. Serving sizes may vary between 150 and to 500gr. With standardized labels it is very easy task.

In my country we have calories listed for both 100g/container and nutrients are always listed for 100g and sometimes for full contaiber. I almost always use 100g part.

In the US, serving sizes are generally standardized per type of food, so two quart containers of yogurt will always have the same serving size in the nutrition facts.

There is quite a bit of water in soda. While there is a lot of sugar, it is about 10% which is a bit less than 100. Specifying per 100g (or some other size) makes it quite easy to compare two different products. Of course you also have to take into consideration how much of the product you will consume

The percentage being expressed is (calories from X)/(total calories). For soda and sugar, that comes to 1.

Per 100g helps people compare similar products. But is that the problem that needs solving? I don't really think so. The issue is that people binge an entire package of food and don't realize how many calories they're actually consuming. These people are not helped by being persuaded to binge a bag of chips with 5% fewer calories.

I've been on a diet and I have a spreadsheet where I transform everything to 100g calories

100g of popcorn is not the same as 100g of chips.

The biggest issue I see with per-100g is it can allow trans fats to fly under the radar by including slightly less than 0.5g per 100g. If the true portion size is 300g then it’s much harder to hide trans fats

> servings almost never match the actual consumption

My favorite serving size: 1/3 of a muffin.

I recently ran across some instructions that said to measure 1/3 of an inch... I was beside myself.

2/3 of a pickle spear. Any more and it can't round to 0.

i bought some chips somewhat recently and the serving size was listed as "6 chips".

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