Cereal Portions

[KittyGlitter]

Have you ever weighed out 40g of cereal? That is a common single serving and it barely touches the bowl! Just curious why it's so small?

[bobbinwales]

Because its sufficient based on recommended calorie intake. Most of us eat more than we need to me includijg out of habit, boredom, ignorance, greed , eating too fast and not chewing. my tip is eat slower

[barry1010]

Yes, I have, when I needed to lose a lot of weight and was eating the 'proper' portions.
Most of us eat far too much at one sitting these days. Every morning I have a single sachet of porridge for breakfast. I know it is more expensive way of buying it but I still need to exercise strict portion control to maintain my weight. It is 27g of oats.

[Old_Geezer]

You get used to the portion size. It serves it's purpose.

[davebro]

Don't eat cereals as such. Occasionally have porridge / 3 dessert spoons of oats. Dunno what that weighs!

[pastafreak]

I don't eat cereals/ porridge...I'll be hungry an hour later. I'm definitely a protein person. Though an sufficient portion size for porridge oats is 45-50g.

[barry1010]

The recommended portion of Alpen is 30g which barely covers the bottom of the bowl yet all their advertising shows very full bowls.

[pastafreak]

They use tiny bowls...;)

[dance2trance]

It is so that the manufacturers can falsify the sugar and fat percentages on the side of the box. Think recent German cars' emission standards scandal. This reduces the percentages for presentation purposes and fools consumers. No other reason exists. They are solid sugar and you add milk - cereals are not slimming. Eat porridge oats made with water - add nothing.

that is why

[woofgang]

its not just cereal....take a look at the service size on things like cake. Its why foods now put per 100g as well as per lilliputian serving.

[theprof]

It's that dreaded EU Regulation 1169/2011 that we still stick to I'm afraid despite being out of the EU. The labelling regulations comes under "Back of Pack" nutrition information.

In a nutshell, the manufactures have to declare the nutrition information per 100g of dry weight. Anything else is up to them. Most have decided on 30g as a typical weight for a portion but it could be anything they choose. They don't care what it looks likes in the bowl. They are on a quest to reduce the nutrition information in the declared portion to the minimum possible in order to make the portion size look healthy at all costs. That's it. If it wasn't for the fact that 10g of cereal would look ridiculous, they would put 10g as a "typical" portion size. There are absolutely no regulation/laws preventing them from doing so.

So woofgang, don't think of it as putting 100g nutrition data of their product as well as the lilliputian portion size; its actually lilliputian portion size as well as the 100g declaration. Dance2trance is on the right track.

[woofgang]

oh yes...the manufacturers didn't choose to put the 100g info on!