Default to European Label

watson

It would be nice to have a setting to choose a default label that is shown on the food properties page. I'm used to the european label that gives a reference for 100g per food. For me the "per serving" label is just confusing. But it's a preference and should be a setting.

Same thing when I want to add a food to the diary - an example:
1. I enter "olive oil" into the search form
2. A lot of entries with good data source (NCCDB) appear
3. I select several from the list to compare nutrition info (macros), but most of them default to different serving sizes. 1g, then 13g, then 14g, then 1/2 spray, ...
4. It is not easy to quickly compare the products. I have to manually select e.g. 100g for every single product

It would be better if all products default to the same weight. I might not be as important for the olive oil example since the macros are very similar.

Karen_Cronometer

Hi Watson,

Thanks for your suggestions for selecting a default label type in the Foods tab, as well as adding a 100g serving as a default option.

We are working on a food comparison feature that would help you with comparing different foods. You will be able to see the foods together on one page to directly compare the same serving size.

Best,

PuterMan

Surely all you have to do is default the label based on the users region. We can then still change it if we wish. At the same time it could default to per 100g for European users and to whatever strange and weird American measures for the Americans.

snatale42

I'll never understand why Europeans are for the whole 100g thing, I get that we're used to what we're used to but at what level does that make sense? Typical serving size makes WAY more sense in almost every example. If I eat 2 slices of bread, what do I care what the macros are for 100g if in real life that equals 3.5 slices? It's a misleading labeling scheme. We eat VERY different amounts of food, depending on the food. Trying to standardize a label like that makes no sense. At least a typical serving will much more accurate to what we actually eat, and isn't the the whole point. On that example, I'm looking at my low carb bread right now, 1 serving is 1 slice (28g) so it's pretty predictable that I'll eat 2 of them. So if that amount is 56g, why do I care what the macros are for 100g? Honest question, not trying to bash it.

watson

Most products I come across here in the supermarket have both 100g and serving size nutritional information. Serving size information is optional according to EU regulations.
For me the problem with serving based information starts when I want to compare two similar products from different brands - the portion sizes aren't always the same. E.g. chips vs. crackers - one might have a "20 chips / 30g " serving and the other "5 crackers / 40g" or some other made-up number. --> 100g comparison, no problem. Also: I almost never end up eating a suggested serving size

robartsd

@snatale42
If there was a standard for "serving size" I might agree with you, but I'm with @watson on this. A standard amount 100 g (or 100 ml) would make comparison much easier. In Cronometer it would just make sense to default the serving unit to per 100 g when selecting a European or Australian label format - that is the serving size the people who are used to those labels are used to seeing.

As far as labeling requirements, I'd like to see three sizes on most packages: per serving - easier for people who are tracking, per 100 g - easiest to compare information with other options, per container - easiest for people using in large recipes and providing a bit of a wake up call to people eating many servings of snack foods from a large package. Where package area is limited, individually packaged servings could omit the per 100 g listing (and of course per serving = per container in this case). All columns should have absolute values, any items that require a percentage of reference intake would only be required to provide the percentage for the per serving column.

PuterMan

@snatale42
Slices of bread I may agree with you but since bread is a no-no on a low carb diet such information is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. BUT we get a default of 1 ounce (28g) all the time. Maybe one day America will wake up to the fact that they are the only people in the world who use ounces, cups, sticks and other weird measures. 100g, or 100ml, is a 'standard' that can be applied to everything whereas a cup is not as it varies so much by the item being measured. Getting back to bread we have it cracked with the European system since the values are posted per 100 g and in the case of bread, per slice or sometimes per portion - 2 slices. If you eat 2 slices of bread you don't have a problem as the maths is done for you. God forbid you should have to divide an 800gram loaf with 22 slices to get the weight per slice and then work it out based on the 100g values. But what you you do if the bread was not sliced?? Of course it makes sense for sliced bread, and for pre-prepared foods, say chicken kievs where the values are given for one portion = 1 cooked kiev. But butter comes in grams here and sticks of butter are meaningless as are portions of butter. For any food of that nature one mans portion is another mans feast, and yes @robartsd a value for the package/container is a good idea.

emd

@snatale42 As others have pointed out, there's just really isn't a thing that's actually a serving size. It's an (somewhat) arbitrary measure that the producer themselves set. So how do they set serving sizes then? They'll try to push it down as much as possible if it contains proportionally a lot of what we normally perceive as "unhealthy" things (like fat and sugar), and they try to increase the serving size if it's mostly "healthy" things (like protein or vitamins). Serving size is basically an unregulated marketing strategy, and there's no way to actually standardize something so arbitrary. What is even a serving size of mayonaise? Or chips? Or even rice?

Since it's impossible to actually define a proper serving size, the best thing that can be shown is the proper relative amounts of different nutrients, and having nutritional values per 100g makes it very easy to do so, while also being able to compare across any other product. After that, it's up to you to calculate how much you ate, since that's what you would do anyways even with serving size since they don't fit anyways.