Thursday, April 10, 2008

"A Perfect Portion"

My wonderful wife picked these up for me from the cafeteria at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

Notice two things - the words, "A Perfect Portion" and the 75g size of the bag.

I imagine most folks when buying the People's Pantry line of "Perfect Portions" (they sell lots of different "Perfect Portions" - other nuts, jelly beans etc.) would assume that they were appropriately sized portions.

Now let's take a look at the back (click it if you can't see):

2 obvious questions here:

If it is a "Perfect Portion" why is it that the nutritional information is per 40g of the 75g serving?

How it it possible that the salt-as-a-second-ingredient, visibly-covered-in-it nuts only contain 1mg of sodium per serving?

The lesson here of course is that you've always, always got to read labels to actually know what you're eating.

In this case the "Perfect Portion" of nuts, if consumed wholly, would provide you with a perhaps not so perfect 460 Calories (more than a quarter-pounder at McDonald's) and who knows how much sodium.

[Given the sale of this product in a hospital, where some patients may well medically be ill-advised to consume too much sodium, I've taken the liberty of writing to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency who I hope might also take issue with the wording, "A Perfect Portion" on the front.]