Bear Naked Opportunism

[elfs]

Bear Naked is a brand of granola that has recently been making a push in our neighborhood. Two big billboards, and suddenly the stuff is appearing on the shelves in every grocery store in the city. I've had it, and found it good enough granola but hardly remarkable. The billboard is catchy, though.

Since cereals were on the shopping list, I took a look at Bear Naked and its competitors. And I was struck, as I was looking at the nutrition information, that Bear Naked was so much better in the sugars and other "fast" carbohydrates than any of their competitors. I mean, startlingly better.

I took a closer look and realized that Bear Naked said "Serving size: 1/4 cup," whereas every other cereal has "Serving size: 1/2 cup." I mean, who eats a quarter up of cereal in the morning? A half cup isn't terribly much.

Scaling up the serving sizes so they were all the same, the generic "organic" store brand, "Back to Nature" actually came out on top. Better price, less sugar-- excuse me, "evaporated cane juice"-- about the same amout of protein. Slightly less fiber, but the price/performance was overall excellent compared to the others.

Obviously, the assumption here is that even people who look at the nutrition facts block will forget to check the serving size, assuming that every cereal uses the same serving size. But to be so blatant about it as to make the bullshit alarms go off was just stupid of 'em.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

"evaporated cane juice"

Wow - they're allowed to do that? Serving sizes and nomenclature are regulated in Canada and the EU.

[blaisepascal]

The claim is that "evaporated cane juice" has more nutrients than refined white sugar, and therefore better.

It would probably be known as "unrefined sugar" in the EU.

Serving sizes and nomenclature have some regulation in the US as well. That's part of how some of these games are played.

The FDA establishes a "Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed" (RACC) for a wide variety of food products, which form the basis for computing the serving size. For instance, the RACC for cookies is 30g, so if you are selling a package of cookies which each weigh 12g, you'd list the serving size as "3 cookies (36g)", and calculate the nutritional information based on that.

There's an exception for single-serving packages. If the package is less than 200% of the RACC, it's considered a single-serving package, and it's serving size is 1 package. If it's greater than 200% of the RACC, and the manufacturer feels it is reasonable to consume one package, they may use a serving size of 1 package.

How this is played out in real life is obvious when looking at beverages: The RACC for soft drinks is 8 fl oz (240ml). A standard can of soda is 12 fl oz(360ml). A standard plastic single-serving bottle of soda is 20 fl oz (600ml). The serving size listed on a can is "1 can (360ml)", but on a 20oz bottle, it's listed as "8 fl oz (240ml)" and "2.5 servings per container". Since the 20oz bottle is bigger than 200% of the RACC, the manufacturers chose to use the RACC as the serving size, not the whole bottle.

Similarly with the packet of crunchy, salty, fried things I got yesterday. It was a bag marketed at a convenience store, too small to really eat part of and store, or to split. "Serving size: 1 oz. (28g/About 20 pieces). Servings Per Container 4".