Obesity Discussion Forums - View Single Post - almost 1/3 of Americans don't understand nutritional labels on food.....

Obesity Discussion · 09-26-06, 03:10 PM

Saw this on the news this morning, a CDC study pollled 2500 people about their understanding of nutritional labels. Of the 2500 polled, 75% had at least completed high school.

That being said, only 69% of the people polled completely understood the nutritional labels. The one thing that people did not seem to understand was serving size.

For example, a 20 oz. bottle of Coca-Cola showed on the label that each serving was say 100 calories and had 25 grams of sugar. What people didn't realize was that a 20 oz. bottle had 2.5 servings, since each serving is only 8 ounces. So if you drank the whole bottle, you would actually injest 250 calories and 62.5 grams of sugar!

Another trick is that if a food has say half a gram of transfat or less, it will be listed as 0g trans-fat on the lable. So if a food has half a gram of transfat per serving, there are 8 servings in the package of food and you eat the whole package, you will eat 4 grams of transfat.....but looking at the label would lead you to believe otherwise.

Be careful!

09-26-06, 03:10 PM	#1 (permalink)
Obesity Discussion Administrator Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 7,815 Weight Statistics 8/1/2006 Start Date: 185 lb Start Weight: 152 lb Current Weight: 155 lb Goal Weight: -33 lb Weight Loss: 5/1/2007 Goal Date:	almost 1/3 of Americans don't understand nutritional labels on food..... Saw this on the news this morning, a CDC study pollled 2500 people about their understanding of nutritional labels. Of the 2500 polled, 75% had at least completed high school. That being said, only 69% of the people polled completely understood the nutritional labels. The one thing that people did not seem to understand was serving size. For example, a 20 oz. bottle of Coca-Cola showed on the label that each serving was say 100 calories and had 25 grams of sugar. What people didn't realize was that a 20 oz. bottle had 2.5 servings, since each serving is only 8 ounces. So if you drank the whole bottle, you would actually injest 250 calories and 62.5 grams of sugar! Another trick is that if a food has say half a gram of transfat or less, it will be listed as 0g trans-fat on the lable. So if a food has half a gram of transfat per serving, there are 8 servings in the package of food and you eat the whole package, you will eat 4 grams of transfat.....but looking at the label would lead you to believe otherwise. Be careful! __________________