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Your post reminds me of the additional problem of "The Serving" which is a unit of measurement entirely conjured up by the food manufacturer to serve as the denominator when listing required nutritional information.

A normal 50g bowl of your sugary breakfast cereal too unhealthy? Just define a "serving" as 20g and cut all your bad numbers by 2/5! Problem solved! Is your bag of chips full of salt? Just invent a "Serving Size" of three chips and you don't have to draw attention to yourself on the nutrition label.

Letting companies define their own units of measurement seems to be a totally preventable regulatory mistake.



Indeed, it's something the EU prevented. There are regulations on what the standard serving size is, and other regulations specifying how the item must be priced -- so all the milk says "per litre" under the price tag in the supermarket, even the fancy one in a tiny bottle.

There were also preferred size regulations, which was meant to make it even easier. Breand could only be sold in multiples of 400g. I think this was relaxed, but it's still present for some things. A standard bottle of wine is always 75cL, for example.




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