The Nutrition Facts labels provides a great amount of useful information to the consumer about how to evaluate the overall nutritional value of a food, compare two similar foods, such as two types of cereal, and it provides essential information for those following a special diet, such as one low in saturated fat, or sodium. That seems pretty straightforward. Actually, this is one of the common mistakes consumers make. People often forget to look closely at the servings per container, especially on foods that come in small packages. For example, I recently purchased a small bag of pretzels from a vending machine here on campus.
Many people assume that a small vending item contains just one serving.
The facts on the nutrition label refer to one serving only. If I had consumed the entire bag of pretzels, I would need to multiply those numbers by 2.5 to figure out how many calories, how much. sodium, etc. The serving sizes on a nutrition label have been decided based on what is called average consumption data, that means about how much soda a person consumes at one time. These amounts are just an average and do not always correlate to what you or I might consider a serving. I can't remember ever drinking only a half a can of soda.