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Article buries the real info: bacon cured with celery salt has to be labeled “uncured” by law in the US. IME there are a lot of bad bacons with this label so I

Article buries the real info: bacon cured with celery salt has to be labeled “uncured” by law in the US. IME there are a lot of bad bacons with this label so I avoid buying anything with the label.

user3939382 5y ago
These trade associations lobby the government to codify these deceptive rules, or like our nonsense serving sizes they all do it in unison so when the food companies are busy deceiving everyone with their package labeling they can say “Hey we’re just following the law!” or “We’re just following industry standards!”
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  And the government happily agrees because a) more scope creep, more budget, more better and b) easy political brownie points from the portion of the population that think the government should be involved in everything. When was the last time you heard a government agency say "no we don't want to be responsible for managing the definition of some already somewhat nebulously defined industry product, doing that is not an effective use of resources in light of our mandate"?
  - DFHippie 5y ago
    > the government happily agrees because a) more scope creep, more budget, more better The people deciding on the budget and bloviating about the budget are not the ones paid by that budget. And the people paid are not generally highly regarded or zealously consulted by the bloviators (well, different bloviators have different favorite budgets), so their agreement is immaterial to the decision.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Have you ever worked in government? Use it or lose it budgeting creates a massive incentive to burn money on all sorts of things, including scope creep. The people actually making the decisions on whether or not to accept the scope creep don't need to be told by the political appointees at the top whether they should because if they weren't capable of reading the political winds they wouldn't have ascended to decision making positions in a government bureaucracy.
- brimble 5y ago
  Trade associations do this, too [EDIT: directly, that is, not just via lobbying]. I once saw someone on this very site (weakly, to be fair to the poster) defend Google's poor labeling of their ads on the search screen with something along the lines of "they're just following the guidelines set forth by [trade association]". Which is exactly the reaction they try to get by laundering their preferences through trade associations. That's the point. An illusion of some kind of authority keeping companies in check, while actually it's those very companies setting the rules, to deflect criticism and stave off actual regulation.
- orev 5y ago
  Serving sizes are set to a standardized size so you can compare equal portions between products. So if you want to know which type of potato chip has lower salt, they both list “8 oz” as the serving size, even if one bag has 10 oz and the other has 12 oz. Then you can easily tell which one you want.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    Yeah right and one small bottle of cola is 3 servings right? Or one bag of crisps, definitely 4 servings there... The packaging should explain the contents, not some weird fraction of the contents that no one sticks to.
    - orev 5y ago
      You don’t seem to be getting the point. The idea is so you can compare the nutritional value using a standard measurement size, no matter how big the bottle is. Knowing how much sodium is in something is not very useful when shopping if you can’t compare it to other products on the shelf. The main issue is really the term “serving size”, as it implies that what’s in the package is a single “serving”. (And this confusion only applies to smaller, convenience size packages. Nobody would think a party size bag of chips is a single “serving”). If they called it something else, like “sample size”, it might not be so bad. However it’s also difficult to come up with a succinct word to describe it.
      - loonster 5y ago
        I believe the EU has a requirement of listing it per 100g. I would greatly prefer that system.
        jeegsy 5y ago
        I was going to comment to say something like this. Intuitively this seems like a simple problem that has been deliberately complicated to provide some wiggle room for the producers.

user3939382 5y ago

These trade associations lobby the government to codify these deceptive rules, or like our nonsense serving sizes they all do it in unison so when the food companies are busy deceiving everyone with their package labeling they can say “Hey we’re just following the law!” or “We’re just following industry standards!”

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
And the government happily agrees because a) more scope creep, more budget, more better and b) easy political brownie points from the portion of the population that think the government should be involved in everything. When was the last time you heard a government agency say "no we don't want to be responsible for managing the definition of some already somewhat nebulously defined industry product, doing that is not an effective use of resources in light of our mandate"?
- DFHippie 5y ago
  > the government happily agrees because a) more scope creep, more budget, more better The people deciding on the budget and bloviating about the budget are not the ones paid by that budget. And the people paid are not generally highly regarded or zealously consulted by the bloviators (well, different bloviators have different favorite budgets), so their agreement is immaterial to the decision.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Have you ever worked in government? Use it or lose it budgeting creates a massive incentive to burn money on all sorts of things, including scope creep. The people actually making the decisions on whether or not to accept the scope creep don't need to be told by the political appointees at the top whether they should because if they weren't capable of reading the political winds they wouldn't have ascended to decision making positions in a government bureaucracy.
brimble 5y ago
Trade associations do this, too [EDIT: directly, that is, not just via lobbying]. I once saw someone on this very site (weakly, to be fair to the poster) defend Google's poor labeling of their ads on the search screen with something along the lines of "they're just following the guidelines set forth by [trade association]". Which is exactly the reaction they try to get by laundering their preferences through trade associations. That's the point. An illusion of some kind of authority keeping companies in check, while actually it's those very companies setting the rules, to deflect criticism and stave off actual regulation.
orev 5y ago
Serving sizes are set to a standardized size so you can compare equal portions between products. So if you want to know which type of potato chip has lower salt, they both list “8 oz” as the serving size, even if one bag has 10 oz and the other has 12 oz. Then you can easily tell which one you want.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  Yeah right and one small bottle of cola is 3 servings right? Or one bag of crisps, definitely 4 servings there... The packaging should explain the contents, not some weird fraction of the contents that no one sticks to.
  - orev 5y ago
    You don’t seem to be getting the point. The idea is so you can compare the nutritional value using a standard measurement size, no matter how big the bottle is. Knowing how much sodium is in something is not very useful when shopping if you can’t compare it to other products on the shelf. The main issue is really the term “serving size”, as it implies that what’s in the package is a single “serving”. (And this confusion only applies to smaller, convenience size packages. Nobody would think a party size bag of chips is a single “serving”). If they called it something else, like “sample size”, it might not be so bad. However it’s also difficult to come up with a succinct word to describe it.
    - loonster 5y ago
      I believe the EU has a requirement of listing it per 100g. I would greatly prefer that system.
      - jeegsy 5y ago
        I was going to comment to say something like this. Intuitively this seems like a simple problem that has been deliberately complicated to provide some wiggle room for the producers.