"serving"....

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Ok.  I'm trying to do my homework for my Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science class.

I'm to look up some info about the nutritional value of eggplant.  (We were told to use wolframalpha.com.  Not sure why -- google knows about nutritional info, too.  But gives different answers.................  Maybe we were told to use wolframalpha so we'd all come up with the same answers.  I can see that.....)

Anyway.

So I am looking at wolframalpha.com's idea of "what is a serving of eggplant."  85 grams.  85 grams?  That seems like a pretty random amount..........  (And not very much, either.............)

Which got me thinking about "serving"s and got me wondering -- who decides what a "serving" is, and what is it based on?

I googled that, and found this article from Huffingtion Post.

Does it surprise you to learn that the whole concept is totally bogus, when applied to trying to figure out how many fruits and veggies we are being told we ought to eat?

Apparently the whole point is to make it easier (or even possible) to compare nutritional value across brands of prepared foods. 

This is not an unworthy goal.

However.

It doesn't exactly translate into understanding the quantity of fruits or vegetables anyone is recommending we eat.  And is pretty meaningless for discussing UNprepared foods............

Who knew.  And -- sheesh!  We need warning labels on the warning labels!




No wonder we're seeing all of these alternative methods of thinking about what to eat -- like divided plates with different sizes of divisions to hold different amounts of different kinds of foods.

 

This image or file is a work of a United States Department of Agriculture employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.


But -- guess what -- you can find *diferent* divided plates..............

And -- of course it's all totally political.  The dairy lobby and the meat lobby are pushing hard for more of their products in the final version than is best for us......................




Here's something else to ponder....  Are people more or less likely to eat a recommended number of servings of fruits and vegetables if the serving size is smaller (so they're supposed to eat more servings), or larger (so they're supposed to eat fewer servings)?  Does it matter?  I wonder..........  If people are presented with more smaller pieces of apple, or fewer bigger pieces of apple, does it affect how much apple they eat?

Wouldn't this be a great idea for a kid's science project?  I am full of ideas of things for other people to figure out!  An idea rat.  :-)



Ok, back to  85 grams of eggplant..............

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