Because American education is failing so badly that we can’t be expected to do math.
On Jan. 1, the Food and Drug Administration’s new nutrition labeling rules kick in, ushering in a host of changes to the way that manufacturers are required to label packaged foods.
Perhaps most notably, new guidelines require two side-by-side columns: one with nutritional information for a single serving, and a second with information for eating the entire package.
This is very costly.
Ends up hurting the poor because it gets added to price.
Liberals hate the poor.
Blame it on the educational system.
How does this hurt the poor? Where did you you find hate involved in this?
“We know that Americans are eating differently, and the amount of calories and nutrients on the label is required to reflect what people actually eat and drink,” Claudine Kavanaugh, director of nutrition and food labeling in the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement”.
Nord,
It costs huge money to change packaging and labels. As an example, a product in DQ system, it is 20-40k per item to meet Obama memu regulation.
This change may require many products on market to be put through process again. Who absorbs those costs? Consumers.
In my experience, barely anyone cares about label.
I see you side again with bureaucratic nonsense and expense for little real benefit.
Awful. Just awful.
Maybe an executive order could be issued to eliminate these labels?
Kevin, how often does the imagery on a package change? When a company changes it for other reasons, like including a new promo or “Now Gluten-Free” text, does it hurt the poor?
Actually, the new regs encourage data to be truthfully presented in a single column. It’s less about math skills and more about common sense. Labeling a 12 oz can of Coke as being 2.5 servings when in 99% of the real world drinks a whole can as a single serving is deceptive whether you have math skills or not. Same goes for that Snickers bar that few have ever eaten as two servings. Or the 2 oz bag of chips labeled as several servings.
The sad part of the whole situation is that enforcement of the regs by feds is near zero. It is still primarily an honor system, although retailers will narc on each other occasionally. The penalty for noncompliance? Fix it at your next printing.
@Wizard You bring up a good point…. but the new regs won’t apply to such “single serving” items;
“An example of a single-serving container is a 20-oz bottle of soda. The RACC [reference amount customarily consumed] for carbonated beverages is 12 oz (360 mL); a 20-oz bottle of soda contains approximately 167 percent of the RACC and meets the definition of a single-serving container. Therefore, the serving size for a 20-oz bottle of soda would be labeled as “1 bottle.”
….Therefore, we intend to exercise enforcement discretion to permit products containing at least 200 percent and up to and including 300 percent of the applicable RACC to be labeled as a single serving…”
OTOH, producers will have to put the dual-labeling on things such as “snack packs”, i.e., the box of 12 single serving bags of those 2oz chips.
This is G’vment nannism at it’s finest:
“If the above options are not applicable, ounce measurements may be used with the applicable visual unit of measure such as a dimension of a piece (e.g., 1 oz (28 g/about ½ pickle))
Imagine a row of pickle inspectors measuring the length and girth of each pickle as they make their way down a conveyor to the canning station.
@MjM
So… my nephew’s grad degree in pickle inspection at UW Madison is worthless?
Not gonna leap on this straight line.
@Wizard Well, if need be he could apply his skill set to USDA carrot inspection. Same thing, different color. I suppose he’d have to bone up on taper calculations, tho.
Or he could take QuidProJoe’s advice and learn to code.
What I wanna know is how the G’vment defines “1/2 pickle”. Are they talking spears? Hamburger slices? Those fist-sized ones at the county fair? Or those little sweet gherkins grandma serves?