The US has a lot of bullshit in their labeling requirements. My wife studied food science in university and some of her biggest complaints are:
- Serving sizes aren’t always the entire package*
- "Natural" has almost no meaning on a package, it is just a hand-waving word
- They can hide a lot of things in the ingredients under umbrella terms like “spices” and “flavorings”
- “Made with real juice” does not mean it was made with the juice on the label. For example, a pineapple fruit juice may be more apple juice than actually pineapple juice
- They can round down to 0 calories if the actual amount is below 5
The most egregious example I’ve seen lately was a jar of pickles I bought where the serving size is 1/3 of a pickle (now the website says 1/2). That’s just so that the sodium doesn’t get out of control and, in all likelihood, because an entire pickle may be more than the 5 Calories allowed to say it’s “0 Calories”.
*This is changing, slowly. Manufacturers now have to put servings for the entire container if it’s small enough
teft@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s so the sodium content seems reasonable.
Drusas@kbin.run 7 months ago