Nutrition and healthy eating

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• August 11, 2010 11:32 a.m.

  Should be simple - any food product that requires a label should have the number of calories in the entire package on the front in bold letters. Your ice cream container holds 4 servings of 250 calories each? Put 1000 calories on the front. Large. Let the consumer decide what the serving size is.

  - Danarra

• June 22, 2010 5:34 p.m.

  The FDA requires companies to put ingredients on a label if they reach a certain amount per serving size. So when a company wants to leave out ingredients they change the serving size on the label to do so. Remember when you look at a food label the ingredients listed are in order from most used to least amount used. This allows the companies to put additives that are unhealthy/harmful to us and you don't even know you are consuming it. Best thing to do is to eat foods that are organic and unprocessed. I think it should be illegal not to tell the general public what we are eating! They just passed a law last year stating that the meat companies will not have to label the difference between Cloned beef and uncloned beef. Now that is SCARY! What exactly are they going to be adding/changing to the cloned beef? We have a right to choose whether we eat cloned or uncloned. But they aren't giving us that right. I think the percentage of people who buy their own cow and have it slaughtered will increase tremendously!

  - L

• June 1, 2010 3:13 p.m.

  I like the idea of "x amount of ____ per cup" and forget serving sizes. Serving size is completely meaningless because everyone has a different idea and different need. What would help most of all is making it cheaper to by healthy food than junk food. Why should it be more expensive to get the "less sugar" or "less salt" version?

  - Susan

• May 23, 2010 2:00 p.m.

  From an energy perspective the guideline is 2 handfuls for every meal see foodsheal.com or drbilldean.com :)

  - Bill

• May 19, 2010 6:46 p.m.

  Restaurant portions and prices can be ridiculous. My husband and I share a meal so we get the right size portions and save money at the same time.

  - Ferne

• May 19, 2010 5:37 p.m.

  Portion control is key. It wouldn't hurt to say 250 cal per serving 4 servings per container on the front of a pint of ice cream, but allowing for someone to get away with 500 calories because it is a "suggested serving" is not okay. Please remember not everyone is an educated consumer, by upping the serving size we are simply encouraging people to eat more.

  - Sierra

• May 19, 2010 8:10 a.m.

  Ashley's comments are on target, especially the first & last sentences. Most of the "nanny types" are more concerned with deciding what is best for others. A "healthy portion" for a 6'4" 220 lbs. man is not the same as for a 5'5" 125 lbs. woman.If you want standard sizes, get MREs and enjoy! Does anyone really believe that the 5'2" 200 lbs. individual got that way because of a misstated serving size or caloric confusion? TV informercials saturate us with diet information/exercise regimens, and so-called fitness gurus make millions on Oprah, etc. My mother used to say "Push back from the table", and my father would say "Get off your butt!" Yet the saying still holds, we dig our graves with our spoons.

  - Andrew

• May 18, 2010 3:24 p.m.

  Serving size is probably the most important factor in reducing the amount of calories consumed. It's not the food that gets us - it's how much we eat of it - yes, even apples and oranges! And we Americans seem to be eating a lot of everything these days. Upsizing the serving sizes would seem to be capitulating to the "supersizing" of the American diet. I think it would be better to find a way of increasing people's awareness of what a healthy portion size looks like as compared to those that we commonly receive in restaurants, etc.

  - Wendy

• May 17, 2010 11:58 p.m.

  Get away from servings and serving sizes. Tell the truth by volume... If a package provides 3 cups of edibles then provide the caloric count on a per cup basis and let the consumer decide what portion they want to consume. Place the responsiblity back in the hands of the consumer. By the way, one cup is about the size of an average fist, isn't that the size of a normal stomach.

  - i.w.

• May 13, 2010 7:07 p.m.

  I think that the only items that need to change their servings sizes are more "single serving" type packages. Like a bottle of coke is technically 2.5 servings. That doesn't make any sense. They just don't want you to know how much junk is in it! And some microwaveable dinners, etc are sometimes multiple servings. Yeah right! Who shares or saves half of those?!

  - April

• May 13, 2010 12:25 p.m.

  I think that putting the calories on the front of the package in big bold print for the serving size normally eaten is a great idea, but this will only work if people actually know how many calories they need per day for a healthy body weight for their height, age, gender and activity level. Seeing that two cups of ice cream has 500 calories will only shock you if you know your daily goal is 1500 and not 3500.

  - Jessica

• May 13, 2010 7:53 a.m.

  Unfortunately, I don't think that there is a right way to go about this. Sure, you can put a serving size on everything, but then people take it the wrong way. Why should we be concerned about the serving size of healthy foods like fruits and vegetables? I can definitely see someone restraining their veggie intake to "save room" for the cake and ice cream. All to often, I think people fail to take issues dealing with diet and try to globalize them, forgetting that no two bodies are alike.

  - ashley