Serving size has a lot of use cases, especially when looking at things individually packaged or in separate units (cookies for example).

Per 100g has fewer use cases in my mind as I'm not a scale and have no idea how to break down most products into 100g.

The other day I bought a cookie that was 200 calories per serving, with a serving size being half a cookie lmfao

Yes, that is what they said.

Oh no! Imagine having to do extremely simple maths.... It's calculus, hardly maths at all.

The whole point is the "realistic serving size" is a myth. It's like buying a bag of 30 sweets and having the serving size be 3 sweets. You know I'm going to eat the whole fucking bag in 1 go, so I would like to know the actual nutrition facts.

And like I said, usually both are on the packaging, but the 100 gram one is required by law. And depending on where you live there are laws regarding the serving size as well and it may be required.

Op said BOTH. No math needed.

Is .25g a realistic serving size to you?

Going to do the math an a number that relates to 100g, as in is pretty much stated in percentage?

then you're going to have to do the math re: how much you're actually going to use

Sure, you're probably going to spray a couple seconds at the most, which would be like less than 30 kcal. Basically nothing that you'd really count, unless you're on a super-strict diet.

But the problem is that it's misleading. Uneducated shoppers might choose that brand specifically because "I'm on a diet", instead of buying a cheaper non-spray version. And/or proceed to put a ton on their food, without realizing avocado oil is almost 900kcal/100g.

"usually all have the same" isn't fully true either in my experience. Are you really going to eat just 1/3 of a candy bar? It says 100 calories in big letters, surely it'd be much healthier than the avocado oil bottle that says 120 calories per serving.

"Serving size" numbers are bullshit and should be banned.

the thing is that different people use different serving sizes. -- written by somebody who pours lots of oil over salad.

then you’re going to have to do the math

Why? It's listed in both, so you know a spray is close to zero. If you're using more than a couple or few sprays, you're doing it wrong, so what's even a few sprays? 5 calories?

Your measuring inaccuracy on other ingredients is going to be WILDLY more than the calories from the oil. Baking and spray the baking sheet? When you measured your flour, did you get it to the nearest TENTH of a gram? Because a gram of flour is like 3.5 calories, so if you were off by a single gram - or your scale doesn't even show decigrams, then the rounding error is likely more calories than the oil you use that adds to each 'serving' of the thing you're making.

So this is extremely unimportant.

EU has absurd serving size measurements too, but also 100g measurements

In Canada we also have nutrition facts per serving bullshit

They don't claim to be sugar-free, at least not the ones made of sugar. Instead, they claim to have 0g of sugar per serving. That is a critical difference.

In that case, they are using synthetic sweetener instead of sugar.

It's rounded to the nearest multiple of 10; it could be up to 5 (exclusively), and could still be listed as 0. It's why so many lower-calorie products are listed with a zero-calorie serving size in the US. I'm not sure about the specifics of regulations — if any exist — on selecting serving sizes; this particular example feels a little fishy to me.

I think you can round down and be off by a certain percentage.

Because they are allowed to do their own testing to determine caloric quantity and there is often some flubbing in the recipe during the testing. Kinda like how VWs used to have a different engine mode for emissions tests than normal driving.

Because it is 0g fat

Edit: /s

Like Europe uses?

And who the fuck cares about calories in serving size?

Calories per 100g would be highly misleading in a product like this. You might use a couple or few sprays, but you're not going to use a significant amount.

That said, listing calories-per-standard-amount as a secondary requirement I could absolutely get behind.

The thing people need to remember about serving sizes is that they are 1) based on studies of what people actually consume, and 2) intended to be parts of a meal. You don't eat "one serving" for a meal. You'd have a serving of several different things. It's extremely unperfect, but at least it gives you something you can work with. I do specifically like them having to also provide "calories per container", though - that's a good attempt to help solve this problem.

Quarter of a second of spray is vastly less reasonable as a serving size, no matter how unreasonable you consider stopping at a single tictac.

I don't use spray, but those that use it normally do four or five sprays. Or sometimes even more.

If the amount of [something] per serving size is below 0.5g, they can legally claim that the food is [something]-free.

At least with fat, protein, or sugar. Although the food industry would probably lobby for this to apply to lead or cadmium, too. Or any other chemical used in UHP foods.

How about love?

The FDA let's calories under 5 round down to 0

Ah so if I just use a table spoon then is still 0! Free oil! (Don't tell Americans.)

What institution in your country ISN'T a piece of shit owned by Big Coconut Oil????

WTF. Like, sure, if you say "no decimal calories needed" it would make sense at the time, and could lead to this by accident. But that's just silly.

that's how ferrero's tic-tacs are 0 calories on the label in the u.s... serving size is one mint, calories and sugar content both get rounded down to 0.

That would do it. If that is in fact how the law works then they are technically correct, if disingenuous on the calories at least.

Why not pump-based spray? I thought we were done with aerosols...

I suggest getting a reusable 2-in-1 spray/pour bottle. Saves a little money if you're buying two things of oil. If you're as frugal as me then you buy the oil from a discount store too.

Avocado oil isn't the problem, but aerosol? I've never even seen that

Well, what Agent641 left out is that manufacturers in the US are allowed to "round down" to 0 if the calories/amount per serving are below a certain threshold. So by claiming 1,532 serving, they can get away with saying the calories in each serving are tiny and write 0. Tick-tack uses this to claim 0 calories even though the are mainly sugar, simply by claiming a portion is 1 tick-tack. It's just another ridiculous US regulation no one wants to fix.

It's cooking spray.

We do have both on packages, per 100g and per serving, but we don't have anything wich is a nanogram per serving containing a couple billion servings in a bottle unless it's anti matter

Its at least more accurate than the maths of trying to multiply by the purported zero on a can of avocado oil.

Let's be honest I'm guessing nearly every country does this

EU as well. (the 100gr. is mandatory).

Yeah, here in Japan as well. I think really enforcing realistic serving sizes (no one is going to accurately do 0.25s) in labeling would also help the US.

Of course it matters. It's oil, of course it has calories, and of course it contains fat. To claim otherwise is simply lying.

And I regularly spray cooking oil for at least two seconds when prepping a sheet tray for baked goods or to roast vegetables, prepping bowls for dough, or a whole host of other common cooking tasks. Don't try and pretend a 1/4 second spritz is the norm, or a useful serving size for something like oil.

5 calories is all but meaningless. There's a small beetle on my window right now. Less than 5 calories.

In the calorie tracking world, there's no difference in kcal and cal.

I own this stuff, I buy it at Costco, I don’t even think I could spray it for 1/4th a second it’s not got a very precise nozzle. There’s also a huge difference, literally magnitudes, between 1/4th of a second and a few seconds over a pan. I use cooking spray pretty regularly and have a few applications like my ornate Nordic wear pans where a bottle of oil would not work well and it would be nice to know what I’m adding to my food but I chalk it up to the caloric cost of cooking

I've also seen plenty of UK products that have 2 sets of calorie/nutrition facts side-by-side, one for calories per 100g, and another for either a more typical serving size, or sometimes the whole container, which really strikes me as a fair middle ground. Have a reference quantity that makes it easy to make overall comparisons across all food, but also a reasonable "preset" for displaying the info for the product in question. It lets you eliminate stupid promotional tags like this that let you claim a food is fat-free, calorie-free, or whatever else by requiring a reference standard that doesn't permit the manufacturer to simply manipulate the serving size until whatever claim they want to make is technically true for the amount they've chosen, while also making it easy for people to track their calorie and nutrient intake. The number of canned products I see in the states that have no way to reasonable seal them again and prevent them from going off once you open them, like large cans of energy drinks like Monster, yet have multiple "servings" in the can so the nutrition facts label can claim a serving is actually somewhere around 200 calories is absolutely ridiculous when you considering most people will treat the cans as a single serving and consume double the amount indicated at a minimum.

no, but you're not just comparing it with nothing, you might also want to compare it with other kinds of oil. The absolute number itself is barely relevant, what most people want to know is which oil products are healthier than others.

haha :)

but it's also about price. do i buy the 200g package at 2,50€ or the 350g package at 4,20€?

having things broken down to "per 100g" helps me with that.

All 1,532 servings?

It came up in hazmat training when I was a volunteer firefighter. It's like handling firearms, you always assume they're loaded.

1/4th of a second is already more than 2 calories. You're really underestimating how much oil is used at a time. No one is using less that 1/4th second sprays

You sound like a calorie apologist. Get bent cally boy!

Oh it has a use case? Really? You're measuring the amount of energy your kettle uses in calories so that you can more quickly estimate in your head how much it costs to run which won't even be remotely correct due to loses and fluctuating energy prices? You probably don't even use metric to measure volume and temperature! You're a fraud! You're a kilocalorie using fraud and I hate youuuuu!!!!!

does it come with a good stop watch?

Look at the serving size.

How do you say 1/2

Thirdlings

Apart from the coin that’s the same everywhere. And it’s because it’s “one fourth” of a dollar, which I mean, I’m not confused, who would be confused by that

We're all mentally conditions on this blessed day.

This is a spray oil though. You wouldn't use it for salad or frying. You'd do a brief spray on a waffle iron or cookie sheet to stop stuff from sticking.

I agree 1500 servings seems like too many, but not wildly too many. I doubt I spray more than half a second of oil on a cookie sheet before dropping cookies on it. 800+ sprays seems perfectly reasonable. And at that scale, the actual amount of calories is a little immaterial.

No one is layering this into their food. Aerosol spray oil is more cooking tool than food you eat.