According to the infallible source known as Wikipedia:

Serving sizes on Nutrition Facts Labels are loosely based on the amount of a product normally eaten in one sitting or reference amounts, determined from nationwide food consumption surveys.

I call Bullsh*t!

Serving size is whatever the marketing departments of food manufacturer’s want them to be to try to fool the unsuspecting consumer.  Take for example individual drink mix packets.  You know, the kind you dump in your water bottle to flavor it.  They typically come in packets that you dump in your 16.9 oz water bottle (16.9…. I know it’s half a liter, but don’t get me started!).  But nearly all of them say on the box that a serving is 1/2 a packet.  Huh?  If you tell people to pour it into a 16.9 oz bottle, then that’s the serving.  Can you seal the packet up after you use half?  No.  Could you even tell how much half a packet is?  No.  Can you buy 8.45 oz bottles of water for your 1/2 packet??  No.

Or how about the old calorie switcheroo.  At the convenience store, I saw Fig Newton packs, both regular and fat free.  Both packs had 2 fig bar cookies inside.  But the serving size of the regular type was “1 package” while the serving size of the fat free type was “1 cookie.”  Both types have the same amount of calories per package, but by changing the serving size from 2 cookies to 1 cookie, they can try to make it seem like the fat free cookie is that much healthier for you.  Because, as you know, we all open a cookie 2-pack, eat one cookie, and save the other one for later.  Yeah, right.

Last week at the grocery store we got some Planters nut mixes.  Those type of things are generally not low in calories, but we wouldn’t want to admit that on the packaging, would we?  The serving sizes they list are so small, one serving generally equates to about how much you can hold in one hand if you reached in and grabbed a handful.  And it’s scientifically proven that the American snacker gets his can of nut mix from the cabinet, carries it to the couch to watch TV, opens it and  grabs a handful, then closes it up and puts it away.

I’m not advocating that people eat more, or should be encouraged to do so.  I just think serving sizes should be what Wikipedia defined them as, which is the amount that is normally eaten in one sitting.  When the government mandated consisted nutritional information be provided on all packaged foods, it greatly benefited the consumer.  But if manufacturers want to keep gaming the system, maybe they need a little more regulation.