Tuesday, June 25, 2013

How many servings?


Can you figure out what's wrong with the serving size for this Trader Joe's deliciousness? Can you figure out what's right with the serving size?

I already hate it when the nutritional info tells me that the serving size is something 1/x of a package and there are x servings. Duh. But this takes it to an even more ridiculous level. I'm not sure what interesting mathematical questions you could ask, there's gotta be something.

One potentially less math-y, but still interesting thing for kids to think about is how manufacturers decide to label how much one serving is. I know I've looked at things like candy bars and the nutritional info says 2 servings, despite the fact that no one would ever eat half a candy bar and think, "I'm good. I'll save the other half for my next meal." But then I look at the calories and think, "Dang, at over 500 calories in this whole candy bar, maybe I should eat just one 'serving' and save the other half for later." But 260 calories in a serving doesn't look so bad. I wonder if there's something interesting around having kids think about how much a serving size actually is for, say, potato chips, and then rewrite the nutritional label to match their serving. Along the same lines, it would be interesting to compare "1 serving" of potato chips as measured in weight vs. number of chips. Did the manufacturer accurately represent the weight of a serving of 10 chips? How would it change all the other nutritional info? This is starting to sound like a middle school proportional reasoning exercise for sure.

What could you add for older kids to make it more challenging math? Package design and labeling has got to include a ton of math. Any packaging designers out there who want to help me out?

No comments:

Post a Comment