The World According to Chuck

I woke up this morning to see a headline announcing that the FDA was “mulling over” the idea of doing something about the serving size labels on food. Noble, maybe, but another example of a government bureaucracy taking the fun out of life. There’s nothing like reading “Serving size=1/2 cup” to get a good chuckle. I need to chuckle more.

Half a cup, by the way, is pretty much the industry standard for a serving of ice cream. Half a cup of what? Like a measuring cup? A coffee cup? Fortunately, our corporate overloads, with nudging from our friends at the FDA, conveniently augment this volume measurement with a weight measurement, expressed in grams. Since the average American wouldn’t recognize a gram if it knocked on their door and offered to raise their property taxes.

The industry standard for a serving of ice cream expressed in grams is around 70, which is about 2-1/2 ounces. Make it five spoonfuls. This is the way my wife eats ice cream. Like an alien, in other words.

I had fun with serving sizes (I have a life) the other day, buying a pizza. It was on sale, an excuse I don’t really need for pizza, but it was a big one, made somewhere in the back of Safeway in their pizza-making department. Even I couldn’t eat this whole pizza in one day, it was that big.

And I looked on the back of the box, out of morbid curiosity, and saw that a serving size of pizza (”a slice”) had 300 calories. Also about an industry standard.

The pizza contained nine slices.

In what universe does a pizza have nine slices? What kind of tool do you use to get nine parts out of a circle of dough?

So, lots of laughs there.

As I said, a noble effort, I guess. I’m all for more information, and I read labels, if only to understand exactly how poor my judgment is going to be around midnight. And maybe it will help decrease our little problem with American obesity, but I’m thinking no, and in the meantime why eliminate my joy? Serving sizes are the throwaway gags of capitalist humor, wink wink-nod nod. If the FDA is serious, they’ll put a label on every carton of ice cream, every pizza box, every can of peanuts — If You Eat This Whole Thing It Will Be Bad, but then they’d have to define “bad” and I’d have fun with that, I guess.