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How Much Are You Really Eating?

How many calories did you eat for breakfast this morning? You may be tell yourself you ate a 110 calorie cereal, but unless you're measuring the suggested 3/4 cup or, in some cases, 1 cup serving, you may be pouring twice as many calories before you even add milk. If you ate one of those handy microwaveable pots of soup for lunch, did you realize that many of these pots contain two servings? If you ate the whole bowl, your 90-calorie soup you thought you ate turned out to be 180 calories, with double the amount of fat, cholesterol (if any) and sodium. As much as we might scan a label to see how many calories are in a food, and how much, fat, cholesterol, salt and sugar is inside, we seem to gloss over the amount of food those numbers refer to. Serving sizes tend to be much smaller than we imagine because we've become so accustomed to eating ever-larger portions of food. Food manufacturers often package multi-serving items as single units. In some cases it's obvious from the size of the package, but it's not always clear cut -- those soup pots are one such example. We tell ourselves we're eating only this many calories and that much fat, but unless you're an expert calorie counter, the reality is very different. Soon food labels will be overhauled to make consumers more aware of how many calories the package really represents, and perhaps serving sizes will be adjusted to bring them in line with reality. Key data will appear on the front of the package instead of hiding on the back or side. What we do with that information, of course, is entirely up to us. Find out more about servings, food labels and portion distortion. Photo courtesy of Getty Images How Much Are You Really Eating? originally appeared on About.com Low Fat Cooking on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 15:56:47.Permalink | Comment | Email this
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