Reply to topic  [ 52 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next
Consider tougher regulation in obesity fight - Labour 
Author Message
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
JJW009 wrote:
Many people would eat several portions of pizza and call it a meal, rather than one portion of pizza along with salads for a balanced meal.

The whole point is what exactly is 'one portion' of pizza? If you order a large pizza (say 12") it's probably either a third or a half. If you order a small (say 7") pizza, it's probably the whole thing. The point I was making was that probably in both cases the nutritional information will under-estimate (I've never seen a single time where it over-estimated) what it defines as 'one portion' to represent on the packaging. In the above example, it would mostly likely be listed for one slice in the large pizza's case and half the pizza in the small one's case. Do you know anyone who would order/cook a pizza then only eat a single slice of it?

You may say 'oh, people are stupid, they should just read the label' but that doesn't hold when the labels are being designed specifically to mislead. When the portion size is detailed next to the nutrition information vertically aligned in a 6 point font and printed in a colour only slightly different from the picture background, there's no conclusion to come to other than the fact they intentionally make them hard to read and easy to miss. That combined with the fact they consistently under-estimate portion sizes leads me to conclude they are doing so to make their food seem healthier (or at least less unhealthy) than it actually is, because they know more people care about what they are eating than in the past, so if they didn't they would sell less product. They are misrepresenting their product in order to make more money.

JJW009 wrote:
This 200g chocolate bar says 4 pieces is a 125 Kcal serving, but I've known people that would eat the entire thing in one go - that's 1010 Kcal and 2 days worth of sugar!

Well, I think we would all concede that some people don't know when to stop but that's a different issue. Your example illustrates the point I'm making though. From the listed numbers, the bar contains 8 portions if my maths is right. Therefore each portion is 25g? A standard chocolate bar (like a mars bar) weighs roughly double that. I know when I was a small child I would be happy with half a confectionary bar but I don't know anyone who does as an adult. You buy a choccy bar as a treat and it's in one packet and you eat the whole thing. Yet the packaging in your example suggests you should eat half as much as you normally would, while making 8 times as much of the product available. You really think that's the most realistic calculation they could have given people?

This is why we need realistic, standardised measures of 'one portion' of various food products which all manufacturers should be required to use in their calculations of nutritional information. Because while you may think it's perfectly realist to expect it, I don't think it's acceptable to ask someone to stand in a supermarket with two packets in their hands and

a) Find the intentionally obscure listing of what is 'a portion' of both
b) Then work out whether (say) 33% of the contents of packet A is more or less healthy than 25% of packet B by doing some mental arithmetic based on the nutritional information presented
C) And then decide how much they'd actually eat if it was put in front of them and how that compares to what's on the packet of the one that appears healthiest from step B.

To figure out which one is the least unhealthy. What would be much better would be if the customer knew what 'one standard portion' of both was going to be, and the packaging on both products displayed nutritional information for exactly that so a direct, simple comparison would then be possible.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 5:39 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:46 pm
Posts: 10022
Reply with quote
jonbwfc wrote:
The whole point is what exactly is 'one portion'...?

This is why we need realistic, standardised measures of 'one portion'...


I completely agree with this. What you expect to be a portion and what the manufacturer has stated can be startingly different. I've brought up the issue of the ready-made lasange above to reflect this. With one lasagne, the whole carton is a portion whereas with the other, it's half. If, like me, you only ever ate the lasagne where the entire carton represented a portion, you're going to automatically assume this the next time you pick up a carton of lasagne even if it's a different brand.

How would you feel if you ate a packet of crisps (32.5g - standard Walker's size) and they suddenly changed the portion size to half the packet?

As pointed out, data can be manipulated to demonstrate that the product is healthy even when it's factually not. It's a bit like each car manufacturer measuring performance based on different parameters eg one brand uses 0-45, another uses 0-60, another uses 0-100. They're not fair comparisons. What needs to happen is that all product labelling is standardised so you know exactly what to expect. It really needs to be easy to do "at a glance". The onus should be on the manufacturers, not the consumer.

_________________
Image
He fights for the users.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 6:04 pm
Profile
Spends far too much time on here
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:20 pm
Posts: 3838
Location: Here Abouts
Reply with quote
It is partly to do with how much effort you are willing to put into your research. I say this as someone who's eating habits changed dramatically on the 1st Feb last year, our shopping list changed it's nature pretty much overnight. Surprisingly I eat a lot less variety of foods than I thought and once I had put the effort in once, I didn't really have to worry about it afterwards. It's relatively easy to wander around a shop with a list of meals, picking things up, working out the contents of the things you normally buy and deciding what a reasonable portion size is. It's not as though you need to do it for every food item in the shop, only the ones you are considering buying.

The new labelling on the front of the majority of foods do it quite sensibly and I have found that incredibly helpful when dieting:

Image

The portion size and details per portion are clearly listed and then you make a choice.

Eating out is never as easy, but once you know more about the food you are cooking and eating at home, it becomes easier to assess the types of food you might buy at a restaurant. According to the Med diet I have been following (and lost nearly 6 stone on so far, I might add) Fish is fine, in whatever form, fruit and veg are no brainers, avoid sauces, poultry is better than red meat and so on. It's not so difficult once you get into the habit. YMMV but I think people need to put the leg-work in if they want to make a change...If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got!

_________________
The Official "Saucy Minx" ;)

This above all: To Thine Own Self Be True

"Red sky at night, Shepherds Delight"..Which is a bit like Shepherds Pie, but with whipped topping instead of mashed potato.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 6:49 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:46 pm
Posts: 10022
Reply with quote
I don't eat out often so when I do, it's whatever I want. I don't count the calories. I went to a fancy restaurant recently and I think I (conservatively) estimated the three course meal at around 1500 kcals.

_________________
Image
He fights for the users.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 7:16 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
Zippy wrote:
YMMV but I think people need to put the leg-work in if they want to make a change...If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got!

Legislation cannot deal with how we would wish people behaved. It has to deal with how people actually behave. The vast majority of the population are how you were before you decided to lose weight; they don't do the maths in their head and, frankly, most of us would spend an entire day in the supermarket if we had to. At best people will pick up a packet and say 'OK, that's probably for the two of us' or 'that's enough just for me' and then look at the nutritional info on the label operating with that assumption. If that nutritional info is based on an entirely different (and, I contend, often entirely spurious) idea of what a portion is, then the calculation we do in our heads will be wrong. I also contend food manufacturers are relying on this mistake happening to maximise profit by selling us food which is cheaper to make and often as a consequence worse for us.

The best way of course is to buy the absolute minimum of processed foods - if you buy ingredients you know exactly what goes into your food and therefore you have a very good idea of how healthy what you are eating is. But again, being realistic, our society has moved away from one where food is prepared from scratch by the majority of people the majority of the time. Given that, we should require the next best alternative. Which is that nutritional information on products is immediately understandable and useful. If choosing between two.. I dunno, two veggie pasties requires you to do a sum of the form ' is (X/Y)*Z greater than (A/B)*C' most people simply aren't going to bother, they're just going to pick the one with the lowest numbers on it, despite the fact that the numbers may actually apply to different amounts of each.

As I say, the ideal would be to massively encourage the buying and cooking of fresh, natural ingredients. But that's a pipedream, frankly. If we're going to have nutritional information on foods it needs to be useful information, not marketing information.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 8:57 pm
Profile
I haven't seen my friends in so long
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:58 pm
Posts: 8767
Location: behind the sofa
Reply with quote
cloaked_wolf wrote:
How would you feel if you ate a packet of crisps (32.5g - standard Walker's size) and they suddenly changed the portion size to half the packet?

The problem is people's idea of a portion varies. Whoever is making the rules actually gives more generous servings than I would in many cases.

I'd say that 32.5g was a really large portion of crisps. In my parents house, that would easily serve 3 people, possibly 6. Why? Because I wouldn't eat a meal comprising entirely of crisps any more than I would eat a meal entirely of pizza or chips.

With the chocolate, 25g is more than I like to eat in one go. With things like a Mars bar I find it nauseating to eat an entire bar, even though it's not just solid chocolate.

I know it's not just my parents and I who eat this way; I've had similar lunches provided at several houses by people who hardly knew each other. It's what I have considered "normal". Crisps are served as a side portion or appetiser, and typically only on a special occasion. Eating more of these rich, luxury items would be considered greedy. As I've said many times before, the way you knew you were at a party was because there were crisps and fizzy drinks.

At the other extreme, I've seen people eat an entire 100g or even 250g bag of crisps to themselves - maybe washed down with a litre of Coke. Not just once, but fairly regularly. They'd probably say that 32.5g was a kid's size portion.

_________________
jonbwfc's law: "In any forum thread someone will, no matter what the subject, mention Firefly."

When you're feeling too silly for x404, youRwired.net


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:09 pm
Profile WWW
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
Zippy wrote:
Image
The portion size and details per portion are clearly listed and then you make a choice.


Just as an aside - it's entirely not standard to put 'percentage of daily amount' numbers in the way the example provided does. Quite a lot of products put absolute numbers (i.e. how many grams of sugar etc.) in the 'front of box infographic' and only put the percentage amounts in much smaller text on the back, or in the worst cases say 'visit our website for full nutritional information'. This is particularly true when the total fat/total saturated fat amounts are high, because that's the thing people most often look for. Again this is providing information which initially seems useful but in fact actually isn't that useful at all. It requires the buyer to actually work stuff out to decide if the product actually fits their meal plans or not. My contention is if you have to work stuff out, the infographic has failed and needs to be improved.

I can tell you exactly why this is - because pretty much any product which ended up with a number greater than 50% in any of the boxes would get left on the shelf. And the manufacturers certainly don't want that, Oh no. So they fudge the figures and hope you aren't going to look too closely. And realistically, they get away with it. I remember looking at the details on one thing - I think it was a chocolate dessert of some sort. It just had the numbers on the front of the packet. I was curious, so I turned it over and checked the small print, which gave percentages. Several of them were over 100% i.e. one portion of this dessert on it's own had more than 100% of a person's recommended maximum intake of certain unhealthy things. No wonder they left the percentage figures off the nice (supposedly) helpful infographic.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:12 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
JJW009 wrote:
cloaked_wolf wrote:
How would you feel if you ate a packet of crisps (32.5g - standard Walker's size) and they suddenly changed the portion size to half the packet?

The problem is people's idea of a portion varies. Whoever is making the rules actually gives more generous servings than I would in many cases.

There are no rules. That's the exact problem. 'One portion' is whatever the particular manufacturer think is one portion. That varies between manufacturers, often making product comparisons painful unless you want to get out a calculator.

Quote:
I'd say that 32.5g was a really large portion of crisps. In my parents house, that would easily serve 3 people, possibly 6.

Six people? One standard bag of crisps? Allow me to propose your family is not entirely typical.

Quote:
With the chocolate, 25g is more than I like to eat in one go. With things like a Mars bar I find it nauseating to eat an entire bar, even though it's not just solid chocolate.

They sell millions of the things a year and I'd be willing to bet the vast majority are eaten by a single person at a single sitting. You haven't got a sweet tooth, that's fair enough. But they wouldn't sell them in portions that size of the majority of people were going to be satisfied with less.

JJW009 wrote:
At the other extreme, I've seen people eat an entire 100g or even 250g bag of crisps to themselves - maybe washed down with a litre of Coke. Not just once, but fairly regularly. They'd probably say that 32.5g was a kid's size portion.

The fact we're talking about a general populational obesity problem suggests the latter might be more common than the former, sadly.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:19 pm
Profile
I haven't seen my friends in so long
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:58 pm
Posts: 8767
Location: behind the sofa
Reply with quote
jonbwfc wrote:
Quote:
With the chocolate, 25g is more than I like to eat in one go. With things like a Mars bar I find it nauseating to eat an entire bar, even though it's not just solid chocolate.

They sell millions of the things a year and I'd be willing to bet the vast majority are eaten by a single person at a single sitting. You haven't got a sweet tooth, that's fair enough. But they wouldn't sell them in portions that size of the majority of people were going to be satisfied with less.

You may well be right that the majority of Mars bars are eaten at a single sitting, but that doesn't make it "normal" or right to eat that much sweet fatty stuff in one go. Believe it or not, most people eat precisely no mars bars most days.

_________________
jonbwfc's law: "In any forum thread someone will, no matter what the subject, mention Firefly."

When you're feeling too silly for x404, youRwired.net


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:22 pm
Profile WWW
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:46 pm
Posts: 10022
Reply with quote
JJW009 wrote:
I'd say that 32.5g was a really large portion of crisps. In my parents house, that would easily serve 3 people, possibly 6. Why? Because I wouldn't eat a meal comprising entirely of crisps any more than I would eat a meal entirely of pizza or chips.

Really? It isn't a meal. It could be called a snack or, as in my case, an accompaniment to the main meal (in this case a "healthy" sandwich). It's in the order of 200kcals. There maybe around 20 individual crisps in that packet so 3 or even 7 each isn't much.

JJW009 wrote:
With the chocolate, 25g is more than I like to eat in one go. With things like a Mars bar I find it nauseating to eat an entire bar, even though it's not just solid chocolate.

To be fair, I find Mars bars nauseating too. I could eat say a Crunchie bar in one go though. However, my point still stands. You consider what is a normal portion based on your upbringing and your own beliefs. There are, as stated, manufacturer recommendations of portion sizes. There may well be a mismatch between what you think is a portion and what the manufacturer states is a portion. In your case, it appears to be that you eat less of the product than expected. The majority will eat more.

JJW009 wrote:
It's what I have considered "normal". Crisps are served as a side portion or appetiser, and typically only on a special occasion.

And yet I'd consider it normal to eat an entire packet alone or split with one person maximum. The packs in the multipack are smaller at 25g. The grab bag sizes are in the order of 50g and they're definitely something I couldn't eat in one sitting unless I was particularly hungry.

JJW009 wrote:
At the other extreme, I've seen people eat an entire 100g or even 250g bag of crisps to themselves - maybe washed down with a litre of Coke. Not just once, but fairly regularly. They'd probably say that 32.5g was a kid's size portion.

I have been at that extreme where I've eaten a 100g bag in one go with maybe 500ml of coke. I wouldn't consider it normal but a "pigfest". I've only done it a couple of times. I certainly couldn't eat anything larger.


jonbwfc wrote:
'visit our website for full nutritional information'.

That really winds me up because I'm clearly not going to stand there in the supermarket looking for this information on my phone. Granted it can be difficult to display everything on small sized items where there's limited display but on other items it clearly shouts out to me "they're hiding something".

jonbwfc wrote:
My contention is if you have to work stuff out, the infographic has failed and needs to be improved.

Something I completely agree with. It needs to be easily comparable to similar products too.

jonbwfc wrote:
making product comparisons painful unless you want to get out a calculator.

This is where per 100g information can be useful if portion sizes of similar products are different sizes.

jonbwfc wrote:
Six people? One standard bag of crisps? Allow me to propose your family is not entirely typical.

I agree. I can only surmise that JJW009 doesn't eat crisps out of a bag like most people and therefore doesn't appreciate the size/number.

_________________
Image
He fights for the users.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:36 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
JJW009 wrote:
jonbwfc wrote:
They sell millions of the things a year and I'd be willing to bet the vast majority are eaten by a single person at a single sitting. You haven't got a sweet tooth, that's fair enough. But they wouldn't sell them in portions that size of the majority of people were going to be satisfied with less.

You may well be right that the majority of Mars bars are eaten at a single sitting, but that doesn't make it "normal"

Er.. actually, I think it does. My definition of 'normal' is that what the majority of people do/would do the majority of the time. What definition of 'normal' are you working to?

Quote:
Believe it or not, most people eat precisely no mars bars most days.

Oh, I agree entirely and I'm sure there are people who have never eaten a mars bar. I suspect however that a part of the obesity problem is there are some people for whome the routine lunch is a sandwich or similar plus a chocolate bar. But whether unhealthy foods are part of too many people's regular diet is a separate issue from whether the portion size of foods we are sold is healthy or not.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:46 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
cloaked_wolf wrote:
jonbwfc wrote:
Six people? One standard bag of crisps? Allow me to propose your family is not entirely typical.

I agree. I can only surmise that JJW009 doesn't eat crisps out of a bag like most people and therefore doesn't appreciate the size/number.

I can actually easily see a circumstance where JJ's example fits - if it's a family and you're having lunch together, you might make some sandwiches for everyone and then have a few crisps as a 'side'. That way, a standard bag would be shared around the whole group of four or more. But I can't agree that's the way it normally happens. Logically, we simply don't have lunch as a family very often any more. Mum and Dad are out working and whatever children there are are at school. That means (IMO) Mum and/or Dad are going to have a packet of crisps they may share with whoever they are having lunch with or may eat on their own and the kids are going to get whatever is provided/in the lunch pack. Either way, a single packet of crisps probably isn't going to end up being shared between 5 or 6 people.

This is one of the other factors IMO that has caused the problem we face. It seems intuitively to me that if you eat as a group and prepare the food yourself, you're going to end up eating less. But we do that much less often than we used to, and instead we now more often eat alone (even if other people are in the house) and we eat processed foods more.

Jon


Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:56 pm
Profile
I haven't seen my friends in so long
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:58 pm
Posts: 8767
Location: behind the sofa
Reply with quote
jonbwfc wrote:
cloaked_wolf wrote:
jonbwfc wrote:
Six people? One standard bag of crisps? Allow me to propose your family is not entirely typical.

I agree. I can only surmise that JJW009 doesn't eat crisps out of a bag like most people and therefore doesn't appreciate the size/number.

I can actually easily see a circumstance where JJ's example fits - if it's a family and you're having lunch together, you might make some sandwiches for everyone and then have a few crisps as a 'side'. That way, a standard bag would be shared around the whole group of four or more. But I can't agree that's the way it normally happens. Logically, we simply don't have lunch as a family very often any more. Mum and Dad are out working and whatever children there are are at school. That means (IMO) Mum and/or Dad are going to have a packet of crisps they may share with whoever they are having lunch with or may eat on their own and the kids are going to get whatever is provided/in the lunch pack. Either way, a single packet of crisps probably isn't going to end up being shared between 5 or 6 people.

This is one of the other factors IMO that has caused the problem we face. It seems intuitively to me that if you eat as a group and prepare the food yourself, you're going to end up eating less. But we do that much less often than we used to, and instead we now more often eat alone (even if other people are in the house) and we eat processed foods more.

Jon

In my family, a packet crisps would only usually be opened if there were several people eating. None of us have ever taken crisps to school or work. If you look around the typical office, you'll probably see that most people are not eating crisps. It's obviously not uncommon, but it certainly isn't the norm.

Incidentally, the only people in my office who do regularly eat entire packets of crisps are all clinically obese.

_________________
jonbwfc's law: "In any forum thread someone will, no matter what the subject, mention Firefly."

When you're feeling too silly for x404, youRwired.net


Sun Jan 06, 2013 10:53 pm
Profile WWW
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:46 pm
Posts: 10022
Reply with quote
Where do you live/work?

Interestingly, when I was working in the hospital, we all had sandwiches at lunch and they were always accompanied by crisps. I remember two who overweight (not obese) but there were plenty of muscular guys too.

_________________
Image
He fights for the users.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 11:01 pm
Profile
What's a life?
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
Reply with quote
JJW009 wrote:
In my family, a packet crisps would only usually be opened if there were several people eating. None of us have ever taken crisps to school or work. If you look around the typical office, you'll probably see that most people are not eating crisps. It's obviously not uncommon, but it certainly isn't the norm.

I wouldn't disagree, the sentence I wrote should probably have said

Quote:
That means (IMO) if Mum and/or Dad are going to have a packet of crisps


I didn't mean to imply the majority had crisps with lunch every day, however I do thing ' a sandwich and a bag of crisps' is quite a common lunch - ref the 'meal deals' most supermarkets do in their chilled lunch item section which seems to always be 'one sandwich, one bag of crisps, one drink with a discount over buying the three separately'. And when lunch is a sandwich plus a bag of crisps, that bag of crisps doesn't get shared out among as many people as your case. And the portion size is whatever is in the packet, in general.

JJW009 wrote:
Incidentally, the only people in my office who do regularly eat entire packets of crisps are all clinically obese.

Hmm.. not sure eating a 200kCal bag of crisps often will make you obese of itself but it implies a .. certain lack of care about one's diet that might lead to such a problem.


Sun Jan 06, 2013 11:04 pm
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Reply to topic   [ 52 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Designed by ST Software.