INGREDIENTS:
What does that ingredient on your label actually do in your body, and why is TikTok so mad about it?
On Ingredients, we pick one nutrient or ingredient at a time and unpack it from every angle: biochemistry, physiology, public health, and the social media discourse that shapes how we feel about food.
Hosted by Susana, a registered dietitian, and MJ, a public health person, this podcast is where evidence meets everyday eating, and nutrition trends get a much-needed reality check.
Find Susana here:
TikTok and Instagram: susana.ritchey.rd
Bluesky Social: susanaritcheyrd.bsky.social
An Everything is Public Health Production
Website: https://www.everythingispublichealth.com/
INGREDIENTS:
Serving Size
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If you’ve ever felt guilty about eating more than the serving on a package, this episode is for you. MJ and Susana discuss what a serving size really means, accompanied by plenty of social media chaos.
Find Susana here:
TikTok and Instagram: susana.ritchey.rd
Bluesky Social: susanaritcheyrd.bsky.social
Music Credit:
Pixabay: TVARI - Tokyo Cafe
An Everything is Public Health production.
Welcome back to ingredients. I'm MJ.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Susanna.
SPEAKER_00What am I about to learn today?
SPEAKER_01Today we are talking about serving size. And even though it sounds already triggering. It either sounds like something restrictive or boring, depending on your experience with it.
SPEAKER_00Either way, triggering.
SPEAKER_01Right. So we'll try to make it interesting.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I have an interesting personal anecdote having to do with serving size. It was also like a social media event after.
SPEAKER_00None of this is good news.
SPEAKER_01There were almost, yeah, I had a bad experience and I made a video about it. And the video got almost 400 comments. And some of them were delightful, some were just normal, and some were so annoying. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00That's the typical social media experience. Yes. So what was the event that led you to make the video in the first place?
SPEAKER_01Have you ever heard of coconut cold yogurt?
SPEAKER_00No, and I don't want to, frankly.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're about to learn about it.
SPEAKER_00So terrible combination of words.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, for a long time I thought people only found it online. I had only seen maybe if you're like in LA or something cool, like it would be in the storefront, but then I didn't live anywhere that relevant, so I never saw it in stores. But I would see wellness influencers have affiliate links to it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Red flag. Never buy anything from those people.
SPEAKER_01Right. And I think at one point I was doing a video about Maha. The former Surge General's brother has a company where you can use HSA FSA funds on wellness gimmicks, right?
SPEAKER_00Which is a terrible policy.
SPEAKER_01Right. You can get a sauna without taxes. So I think that's actually how I found this product. I found that you could get, I don't know if you could get this yogurt tax-free, but it was like in someone's affiliate link with like a bunch of other wellness stuff. Anyways, that's the first time I found it. And it was shocking to me because it was so freaking expensive. If you order it from the website, which up until recently I thought that was the only way to get it, you have to buy a minimum of two 16-ounce jars of yogurt. And of course, you have the option to subscribe for a 10% off discount.
SPEAKER_00Never do that.
SPEAKER_01So I want you to guess with this 10% off, how much do you think two jars of this yogurt costs?
SPEAKER_00Expensive amount would be, I want to say $30 would be expensive. Kind of unreasonable would be $50 to $60. And then downright obscene would be anything north of $75.
SPEAKER_01Yep, you are looking at $78.
SPEAKER_00See, this is why you don't the moment you see it promoted by Willness Influencer, just go ahead and not buy it.
SPEAKER_01$78. So needless to say, I was historically just not in the tax bracket to try the yogurt.
SPEAKER_00Good.
SPEAKER_01And I will try a lot, I will try things that are like expensive. I can definitely like be frivolous at the grocery store, but I was like, no, we're not doing this.
SPEAKER_00This is not frivolous. This is irresponsible.
SPEAKER_01Right. And to be fair, you know, they do have to cold ship this yogurt and ensure that like Don't defend these babies.
SPEAKER_00I won't. I'll stop. Wait, but I I can't believe you actually bought it?
SPEAKER_01No. I don't know why I'm giving you so much backstory. But finally I was at the store and there it was in the store. There was this little four-ounce container.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01And I was like, wait, that's coconut cold. That's like the item that I've been priced out of for so long. And there it is. It's a four-ounce container for $399. I can buy that.
SPEAKER_00But why do you want to?
SPEAKER_01Well, because I like to buy the new things at the store. You know, it's like the little joys in life.
SPEAKER_00All right. Everyone's human.
SPEAKER_01Right. And I can come up with a more responsible excuse. A lot of my patients need non-dairy alternatives. So if you want like a better sounding excuse, I'm just trying to try out the different products for my patients.
SPEAKER_00You know what? For $4, we are allowed to experiment.
SPEAKER_01Also, I don't know if you ever run errands after working out. It is a terrible idea because you're ravenously hungry and then you decide you need to buy everything. And it's expensive and uh typically not health promoting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, same reason why you don't want to go grocery shopping hungry.
SPEAKER_01Right. That's exactly what it was. So I was super hungry and grocery shopping, and I just got it in my head that it was gonna be my car snack.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Four ounces is very small.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I was gonna eat that in the car and then I'd eat something solid at home. So I'm excited, planning on all of this, get in the car. I realized I didn't have a spoon. I realized I was too hungry to care. So I just ate it like a feral animal while I was driving home.
SPEAKER_00Susanna.
SPEAKER_01And that was the beginning.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, I appreciate that you feel comfortable being vulnerable in front of this audience.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Well, I just feel like, you know, you think of like a wellness culture as being kind of glamorous, and this whole experience was riddled with the opposite of what is the opposite of glamour? It was not that.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you ate it like an animal in the car, and what happens after that?
SPEAKER_01Pretty quickly things deteriorated, and I I try to keep it polite. So what I said online was that things sort of devolved into gastrointestinal calamity. It was, you know, a rough time physically.
SPEAKER_00And bad yogurt, okay.
SPEAKER_01I actually at the time I didn't attribute it to the yogurt.
SPEAKER_00That's true. It could be anything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like I just figured something was going on. I even had a the lemon flavor the next day, and it made me a little bit nauseous and like kind of feel weird. And I was like, hmm, the yogurt is super high in saturated fat. So I was like, maybe this is like too much fat for me. I don't know. I was just really confused. But then I was in a group chat and someone in the group chat they compared it to colonoscopy prep. And I was like, oh.
SPEAKER_00So it's not just you.
SPEAKER_01This isn't a personal problem. This was the yogurt, and it's actually like sort of a known effect of the yogurt.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_01They actually sort of market the yogurt in this way.
SPEAKER_00See, this is why you don't buy anything from wellness influencers.
SPEAKER_01To start off, I just want to clarify that this was like right next to the Chobani.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I mean, they put it all together, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's all of these yogurts are together. This was not in like a weird dietary supplement location or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00It's being sold as yogurt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it looks like a single serve yogurt. But as I learned more, I found out it was not, in fact, a single serve container.
SPEAKER_00How big was a container?
SPEAKER_01It was four ounces.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, sorry. You're telling me it's a four-ounce container and it's meant to be subdivided.
SPEAKER_01Right. And so a typical yogurt is about 5.3 ounces. Like if you get a Chobani yogurt, that's what it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, around that size.
SPEAKER_01So you think something smaller than that is most definitely single serve?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, apparently, if you look at the label, it does have two servings. It says a serving is two ounces.
SPEAKER_00Who the f but it's two servings in a four-ounce container. It's tiny. For the metrics people, it's tiny. You can hold it in your hand.
SPEAKER_01And I learned eventually that most people don't even have two ounces. Um, most people have a spoonful. And they say if if you buy the larger container, I think it's like an eight-ounce container that has been out longer. There's a QR code on it, and it says multi-serve jar, start with one serving and increase slowly. This messaging is not on the four-ounce container FYI. The only clue I would have had on the four-ounce container was that it was two servings.
SPEAKER_00That's ridiculous for them to subdivide a four-ounce container. That's wild.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so now that I know more about it, the reasoning is like it's really should be considered more of a supplement than a yogurt. Now, when it comes to like it is not a supplement, it is a food product. Obviously, there are like regulations around what is sold as supplements and what is sold as food. And it is not sold as a supplement. It doesn't have supplement facts, it has nutrition facts. So I'm a little defensive about that because I'm about to show you some of the comments I got.
SPEAKER_00This is fodder for social media meltdowns.
SPEAKER_01You don't have to read my response because that's me having a bit of a hissy fit.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay, this first one.
SPEAKER_00Wait, hold on. So the context is you posted a video about this experience.
SPEAKER_01Basically, like everything I told you, I said in the video.
SPEAKER_00Got it. You made a video.
SPEAKER_01Right. The point of the video, I think I was just saying whether the yogurt was healthy or health washing.
SPEAKER_00It's health washing for sure.
SPEAKER_01It wasn't just to like bash the yogurt. I tried to be fair because obviously, we'll circle back. Just read the first comment.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm gonna read the first comment. First of the comments that you have selected for me to read. As an RD, which I'm assuming is registered dietitian, right? I'm very concerned that you didn't read the label or understand anything about the product before eating it. Okay, get out of here, Karen. What is this attitude? Wait, what a social media platform is this?
SPEAKER_01That was TikTok.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah, understandable. I don't like this person's tone.
SPEAKER_01So, I mean, first of all, why do you have to be a dietitian to consume yogurt appropriately? Like, you don't need to have higher education to access a product.
SPEAKER_00Also, it this is I think a borderline form of victim blaming because who subdivides four ounces of yogurt? That's my point.
SPEAKER_01And like most people aren't reading every single label.
SPEAKER_00Not for an individual pack, definitely not for those.
SPEAKER_01There is not a single other food I can think of where if you ate two servings of it, you would become extremely ill.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not like you ate 200 servings or 20 servings. You literally just ate the container, which is sold visually as a single serving of yogurt because that's how all yoga single serving looks.
SPEAKER_01And this, obviously, I don't want to be graphic, but this was not mild illness. This was pretty intense. So like I believe you.
SPEAKER_00You don't have to go into the details, but I believe you, right? Because if it's just a mild thing, I'm pretty sure you would have just chalked it up to like, oh, it's a new food.
SPEAKER_01Right. No, this was like a weird, and then obviously it's happening to other people.
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure, not just you.
SPEAKER_01And there wasn't anything on the four-ounce container. If I had bought the eight-ounce container, I could have gone to that QR code and like learned a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00But even then, that's too many steps. Way too many steps.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the average consumer is not, should not be expected to do that before eating food.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this comment, one borderline victim blaming, and two, is weirdly condescending in a way that because you are this, therefore you are supposed to behave in a certain way. And I'm like, to some degree that's true, but definitely not in this context. This is the same as saying, like, oh, you're a doctor. Like, how can you eat fried chicken? Did you not know that it's bad for you? Or like, you're a chef. How do you eat shin instant ramen? Don't you know that that's not good ramen?
SPEAKER_01Right, exactly like that. It's like a very silly caricature of my career. Like, I'm a human being, I just go to the shelf and pick things up. I don't always look at the nutrition facts. Like, I'm not a robot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. This is not the case where you bought a bucket and thought to yourself, oh, this is a single serving. They subdivided, I can't stress this enough. They subdivided a four-ounce yogurt.
SPEAKER_01And to be clear, if it were a supplement, I would have been very cautious because I am cautious of supplements.
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah. They could put anything in there.
SPEAKER_01Right. I'm typically pretty confident about yogurt or like, I don't know. Not anymore. Yeah, now you never know what you're getting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this person, not a fun person to be around, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01But you know what? Who angered me more?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I'm just scrolling down. There's more, huh?
SPEAKER_01Well, the one who I really got pissed off by, I probably shouldn't say her name, but it starts with root healing.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Quote, it's marketed as a prebiotic yogurt. Every yogurt is prebiotic. Calm down.
SPEAKER_01Probiotic yogurt, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's marketed as a prebiotic yogurt, not like Chobani or Light and Fit. Chobani and Light and Fit are prebiotic yogurt. Are they not?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Am I insane? And just for clarification, it's pro, not pre.
SPEAKER_00Oh, probiotic, sorry. It's marketed as a probiotic yogurt, not like Chobani or Light and Fit. Crazy sentence. It's a supplement, not a snack. Even crazier sentence.
SPEAKER_01Because it's not true. It's not true. Because it's actually not true. It is food.
SPEAKER_00It even states the amount of live probiotics as well. I understand your experience wasn't great, that's valid, but to blame the product isn't fair or accurate. I've never heard anyone else using it as traditional yogurt because even as they say in their website, they are devoted to giving probiotics everything they need to live their best lives. So they unleash their full regularity boosting potential. Their goal is probiotic, so we poop. It was a mistake, and that's okay. But Coconut Cult didn't do anything wrong here. This person was paid by Coconut Cult. I'm nearly certain. For legal reasons, I'm not sure, but like this sounds like that firm's PR.
SPEAKER_01I mean, she got 14 likes on that. I mean, a lot of people agree.
SPEAKER_00That's not a lot.
SPEAKER_01Well, the likes she got was on her uh highest comment that said, this is more user error than an issue with the product.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What is this victim blaming?
SPEAKER_01And it's like, girl, you should not be able to use yogurt wrong.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You should not be able to use it incorrectly. That's a crazy thing to say.
SPEAKER_00Here's the thing: it is with very rare instances where blaming the user is the correct option versus blaming the corporation or the company. As a producer of a product, you have the onus of providing and designing a product that is easy for the consumer to understand. Obviously, there are some, I'm pretty sure we can all think of some really outlandish example of someone just being stupid with the product. But generally speaking, those are the exception and not the norm. And it is the responsibility of the producer to make sure that the consumers are able to very clearly identify what this is for. So any sort of these comments just makes it sound like the people who defend corporations, you know, the people who are like, I can't believe you're criticizing open AI. This is like, no, like it is not the consumer's responsibility to fix the product.
SPEAKER_01No, and like to the previous person's point, I am a registered dietitian. I am a more savvy food consumer than most people. So they should be assuming that most people are not going to be like looking at the CFUs on the label. There were plenty of comments that were more reasonable. And I think someone was like, oh, I work in food labeling, and this is like a major problem. We expect people spend like four seconds glancing at a label.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you don't deep dive read a label, and I sound like a broken record, but why the f you subdivide four ounces of yogurt? Like it doesn't make any sense. This person that led this comment, we're not gonna say her username, but from her username and profile picture, like this is a wellness person a hundred percent. There is no way that this is a normal person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I appreciate the solidarity because it's not solidarity, like this person is just wrong.
SPEAKER_00Obviously, I'm saying this as your friend, but even if you weren't my friend, I I would have been like, this person is insane.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. And I don't want to like pat myself, maybe there was a little bit of user error. Like I clearly ate twice the serving size, but it is weird that so many people liked it. And that does make me kind of wonder if there's like a little bit of bodish influence. Now I think I'm just trying it to make myself feel better. That's probably not true.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, here's the thing you made a point earlier that doubling the serving size should not cause any sort of distress. Like at the most, it should cause it, might make you feel a little bloated, maybe, or something like that.
SPEAKER_01And that's actually a great segue into getting into serving size and what it is.
SPEAKER_00All right, tell me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, so a serving size is not how much you're supposed to have. Legally, it is not. A serving size is just supposed to reflect the amount that people typically eat and drink. So it's never fair to say, like, oh, you're supposed to have two ounces of spaghetti. That's just what they've found is sort of like a typical, and even then it's obviously debatable how realistic some of these serving sizes are. They are based on data. So they were most recently updated in 2016.
SPEAKER_00Quite a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh, you're right. That's actually a solid chunk of time. Feels like four years ago, but yeah, you're right. So they're based on data from 2003 to 2008 from um NHANES, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. And since that update in 2016, they're supposed to make it if you look at a 20-ounce bottle of soda, it must be labeled per bottle because people are typically consuming the full bottle. Whereas previously it might have said that there were multiple servings per bottle, but they've just found because of typical usage that they have to put the full amount of calories and all the nutrition facts per bottle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so two points to this that we have very clearly established. One, serving size is not a moral judgment. It is literally just here's what people typically consume. And two, sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes the serving sizes are just wrong. Like, I want to say the serving size of Oreos is two Oreos or something. We should probably confirm this. Actually, it's three cookies, but still, three cookies, who eats three Oreos in one setting? Or is it just me? But that's what I remember as being something ridiculous.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, I know like for Girl Scout cookies, it's three Samoas, two thin mints.
SPEAKER_00Who eats three Samoas?
SPEAKER_01Or no, it's two Samoas, three Thin Mints.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry. Like anyone who has eaten Girl Scout cookies, you just don't do that. I don't know who does.
SPEAKER_01You know, I did as a child eat pretty conservative serving sizes, and I'm going to attribute that to my mother.
SPEAKER_00You are the exception. Like, I'm sure there are people out there who do eat a few cookies at a time, but I'm gonna straight up tell you that is the exception and not the door. Most people eat more than a few cookies.
SPEAKER_01It's not my husband, and it actually startled me because like I snack on chips, but I'm not used to like snacking on cookies, but he's like a cookie snacker, and I was like, oh, you just keep eating them.
SPEAKER_00You are the exception, okay? Most people just keep eating cookies. What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the point is, to go back to serving size, they are not a moral judgment, and sometimes they are wrong. They're just an estimate.
SPEAKER_01And it's not directions.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not a direction.
SPEAKER_01Like one of the comments was does anyone read directions on this stuff with 78 likes? There were no directions on this product. There was a serving size.
SPEAKER_00Serving sizes are not directions, so they are a guide to help the user understand what's in it, and that's it. They are not a moral determination.
SPEAKER_01So you can calculate the other stuff on the label. So if you want to know how many calories, but you only had half the soda, then you know to cut the amount of calories in half. That's pretty much what it is for.
SPEAKER_00That is their entire purpose. So I don't know. Like, should you have read that? Should you have not? I don't think that is the crux of the problem with the coconut cult yogurt, the bacle that you had. That is not the problem. The problem is they essentially designed a product that's not meant to be yogurt.
SPEAKER_01Well, I got about 250 comments of like that's weight, the serving size is one spoonful or something, which it isn't, but they do say that online in some places.
SPEAKER_00I will also say you're in a part of the internet algorithm that's probably full of people that are like this.
SPEAKER_01Well, people are so proud to like know about something before you. They're like, oh, you didn't know about coconut cults, user error.
SPEAKER_00You gotta stop reading the comments.
SPEAKER_01The comments you do have to like break away at some point. I'm still getting comments from it, and this it's been like weeks at this point. I'm like, no, I can't. I'm not gonna read that, even though thank you for engaging, but no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. Some unhinged people on the internet always. That will never change.
SPEAKER_01Some other you may have noticed a change in that there are also dual labels in some circumstances. So a package might have both a per package and per serving label. This is if it has between two to three times the reference amount consumed. So if you think of the mac and cheese box is what I'm used to. The mac and cheese box has two and a half servings in it. So they have information per serving and per package, which I like because, like, I don't know, like a lot of the kids will probably eat about a serving. But like, if I'm making a box of mac and cheese, you're making the whole box. Yeah, and in general, serving sizes are going to be like somewhat standardized. So, like ice cream, you're gonna see it's consistently two-thirds cup, milk is eight ounces, and this is set by the FDA, which did make me question what do they do for products that are new, like coconut cult, where they aren't going to adhere to like similar yogurt serving sizes.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. This is something worth looking into. Do you want to see what a quick Google gun do? My guess is that they probably just pick a category of food and just stick with it. That's my guess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so first they see if a novel food item matches an existing food category. It says the manufacturers must use the established reference amounts customarily consumed, but that's clearly not the case for this. Unlisted categories. If a novel food does not fit an existing reference amounts customarily consumed category, manufacturers look at similar foods. What? Or petition the agency to establish a new reference amount based on consumption data.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So it seems like it's rather loose. There's no like label police to crack down on this.
SPEAKER_01I think we should make label police.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, yes.
SPEAKER_01I have a grievance.
SPEAKER_00We need to make label police. I have grievances too. Like Oreo's serving size should not be a few cookies, they should be the whole row or the whole box.
SPEAKER_01But you know what? When I'm thinking of the FDA's priorities right now, I'm gonna give it some slack.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not gonna happen. I'm still caught up on the fact that they subdivided four ounces. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Anyway, the point is to summarize the science part of this episode serving size is not a moral decision, and nor are they always accurate.
SPEAKER_01And it's not an instruction, it's not an instruction, it's based on consumer data, which does baffle me. To an extent because when I think of pasta, I'm like, who is having two ounces of pasta at a time?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Same thing with Oreos for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or peanut butter. Like you do question where are they getting this from? Right. I mean Ed Haynes, but like what?
SPEAKER_00It's been a while since they've looked into this again. So maybe things have changed. But the point is it was never meant to be a direction.
SPEAKER_01And that's a great point because when they updated it from previous years, they almost everything went up. A few things like yogurt serving sizes went down, but almost everything had to be increased because the amounts we're eating are increasing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're eating more. Something to talk about later. But yeah, it's meant to be information and not a direction. It's meant to be helpful to help you do some math, but that's about it.
SPEAKER_01Do you want to hear some other really extreme social media things?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. Why are we talking about this today?
SPEAKER_01Based on your like sighing, I don't feel like I've told you enough terrible stuff about the internet.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah. Hit me with more terrible things that people have about serving sizes.
SPEAKER_01When it comes to small serving sizes, I'm seeing some commentary about almond moms.
SPEAKER_00I do know them. There's a lot of content making fun of almond moms, at least in my neck of the woods on the internet. There's a lot of video that's like, your mom is about to give you an eating disorder. And then it'll be a montage clip of like things almond moms say. But we should define what it is. What is an almond mom?
SPEAKER_01So almond moms are moms who incorporate extreme diet culture restriction and often body ideals onto her children under the guise of health and wellness. Some of this has to do with portions, which is why I'm bringing it up now. And then it also has to do with other aspects of wellness culture, so ingredients and body size and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00An example that I've seen that still gets me is now I don't know whether there are people that are actually like this. Maybe it's like extreme because it's satire, but there's this clip of this woman that's like, I'll have half a banana.
SPEAKER_01That's not satire.
SPEAKER_00That is That's not satire.
SPEAKER_01That's so sad. No, I mean a lot of people who has half a banana.
SPEAKER_00I just can't.
SPEAKER_01Well, some for blood sugar reasons.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we're not talking about those.
SPEAKER_01But that's just me trying to be fair. Yeah. No, definitely diet culture for sure is like cutting your bananas in half. And like, I don't want to throw my my mom is like a normal person. She's like not crazy, but there's a little bit of almond mom tendency. Like, as I mentioned, I ate Girl Scout cookies in serving size amounts.
SPEAKER_00Which is again not the norm.
SPEAKER_01And she's she's one of those people who's always talking about how the muffins in her day were so much smaller.
SPEAKER_00Is that true? Maybe.
SPEAKER_01She's like, when I was young, muffins were just small things, you know?
SPEAKER_00Maybe. Maybe some memory distortion. Who knows? Who knows? But I do think almond moms is a spectrum. Right. Right. So I'm pretty sure a lot of women grew up in the era of diet culture, got a little bit of everything, you know.
SPEAKER_01And like there are different ways to dip your toes into diet culture. Like a lot of people had like low-carb moms. Some have are more concerned about serving sizes. One video was like my almond mom eating like a slice of cake, and it's like the mom just cutting like a sliver. And that is something where I know like my mom would totally do like a sliver of oh, just have a little bit of cake. No, what she would do is I would order ice cream and then she'd be like, Oh, I just want a bite of yours. And then she'd like take like a massive spoonful because you don't feel like you're actually eating it if you're stealing someone else's.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. So I definitely know about almond moms, but in a very limited context, usually it's videos like satire videos, or like I grew up in an almond mom, like that sort of videos.
SPEAKER_01That's a lot of the content, is just funny to have a name for something that a lot of people experienced. And the name is is very evocative. It kind of reminds me of like getting out the food scale to weigh your almonds because nuts are high in fat and calories, and like some people may not feel comfortable consuming them without measurement parameters around them.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I so you're right that nuts do contain fat, but I don't know, unless you're eating like a bag of almonds.
SPEAKER_01You also don't absorb as much of the calories from like almonds versus like almond butter, and they are associated with like pretty stable weight. So I don't want people to actually be concerned. But yeah, there is like a culture of being fastidious around high-fat foods like almonds, and it can feel really silly because they're healthy foods.
SPEAKER_00They're healthy foods.
SPEAKER_01I've also seen uh some videos of almond daughters. They're like, I'm an almond daughter, and this is what I eat in a day.
SPEAKER_00No, that's just sad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it makes me really, really bummed out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like that is definitely not a healthy relationship you should have with food. No, not even a little bit. That's very sad that people are not recognizing that and are sort of embracing it instead.
SPEAKER_01People feel good about like having their identity in like healthy eating, and that's why they're okay saying, like, I'm an almond daughter, because you feel like, oh, healthy food is my thing, you know, like I'm known for being the healthy eater. And then, you know.
SPEAKER_00We'll talk about this later. There's some misconceptions about this. Okay, so that's another nightmare corner of the internet.
SPEAKER_01And on the flip side, I'm gonna pronounce this wrong. There's something called mukbangs.
SPEAKER_00No, that's pretty close. Mukbang.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00I think Koreans might say mukbangs. Mukbang is how most people say it.
SPEAKER_01That's like the flip side on social media, where I don't think it started off this way, but it has sort of turned into just like a video where a creator is eating an absurd amount of food.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a eat with me, except uh eating is a buffet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it looks like in the past it was just like let's share food in front of the camera for different reasons. And of course, it has turned into something else. There are like subsets of videos that are about like mukbang ASMR, so you're just supposed to hear people eating and slurping and chewing, which is a sensory nightmare for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00The mukbang trend is a very good example of social media evolution, like the type of really problematic things that happens when an algorithm picks something up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because it really started out as more of like a loneliness thing. Like, hey, like you're eating lunch alone at work, turn on this live stream and I'll eat along with you.
SPEAKER_01That's kind of nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It started like that. It's kind of nice. But then some streams where people are eating more lavish and extravagant food, they obviously get more traction. Right. And the feedback cycle just starts. And then people are like, okay, what are some more expensive food that I could buy? What are some more extreme food that I could eat to sort of stand out among the sea of these mukbang creators? If you don't know this area of the internet, I don't recommend you look it up because it has gotten to a point where they are just eating kilograms of food. Yeah, it's like as like an endurance thing.
SPEAKER_01Extreme televised binge eating.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much.
SPEAKER_01That is just picked up by the algorithm. No serving sizes in sight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and something that is rather insidious is that the people who are performing these acts cannot be visually fat. They have to be visually skinny.
SPEAKER_01Oh, the commentary is very different on the video, depending on what the person looks like.
SPEAKER_00Correct. That's like another layer of eating disorder.
SPEAKER_01There's just so much social commentary on how like it's kind of like hot for like a conventionally attractive woman to like eat a lot of food. Eat normally, right? Like it's like, oh, she's a she's not like the other girls. Right. She's not dieting, she's willing to eat a burger. Yeah. But then if you don't have that kind of conventionally attractive body, then it's like, what's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_00The comments are very mean. Yeah. Like, you're gonna die, you're gonna have a heart attack. The thin culture really seeps through on some of these mukbang videos. And I will reference our first ever episode, calories in, calories out. They are eating, I want to say, maybe five, six thousand calories in one of those streams, potentially more. I shudder to think what they are doing to offset that. If they're visually skinny, that is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's a great point. Overconsumption, it's usually paired with restriction. Like it's not like they're opposites. We often see that restriction proceeds and follows binging in part because you just don't feel good. Like if you've ever been on vacation and you've had like go out to eat like a million times, you get this like, oh, I don't want to like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you do feel gross. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like I want to go on a juice cleanse kind of feeling. Like that's what happens. People go to extremes.
SPEAKER_00So either they are restricting in other times of their life, or maybe they're doing something bulimic behaviors where maybe they're throwing up after the camera turns are off, or maybe they're taking laxatives, like who knows? Because but in order for them to maintain that thin while doing this regularly, something has to give. We just don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_01Right. That's definitely true. But yeah, the social media loves to see extremes. These are the extremes of serving size. Social media loves a good place to judge others and some as you have been judged for eating a four-ounce yogurt. Yes, as I have been judged. How dare I eat two extra ounces of yogurt?
SPEAKER_00Anyway, any final thoughts about serving sizes?
SPEAKER_01I think just in general, the best serving size is the one that like makes your body feel good and like gives you a reasonable amount of nutrition. And when I am usually talking to people, it's less about like, oh, portion out your foods. I'm not usually telling people unless they have like a medical condition. I'm not usually talking about like restricting portions. It's more about composition. So if you don't want to like overeat like chips or cookies or like super palatable foods, then I typically recommend trying to compose your meals so that there is like a lot of variety. The best way or the simplest way is I think thinking about biplate plate where you've got half fruits and vegetables, a quarter grains or starch or and then a quarter protein. And that way you're getting a little bit of everything. And you're not going to be like obviously hyper palatable food is still hyper palatable, but you've got other things there that sort of break up the attention and you're not just going to be eating like crazy amounts of one singular food. And that's usually the hardest is when you're just sitting down to a single, like a bag of chips, like one thing. That's when it's the easiest to overdo those portions. And so for snacks too, I say pair foods, don't just sit down with one thing. Try to have like a satisfying pairing with at least two food groups, ideally with some protein and fiber.
SPEAKER_00But you know, that's some very grounded and very good advice. I am definitely very weak when it comes to snack. And you're right. Like, whenever there is a single object or a single food in front of you, that's when you just keep eating. Mindless eating.
SPEAKER_01Like it's gonna take so many chips. You're not gonna be full from like a normal amount of chips.
SPEAKER_00No, you're just gonna want to keep eating, right? So the advice of composition and making sure you treat food more like a meal than just something that you do, right? Right. That's really good. I really love those advice. That's perfect. I think in general, when it comes to food, the extremes are never good. So if you find yourselves on either extreme, maybe just watch it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or you know, look into what's going on. Why am I being driven to sort of an extreme place?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. So let's talk about the public health effect of all of this. I'll be quick because we sort of covered most of this already. I mean, the clearest connection to public health is definitely eating disorder aspect. Almonds mom and mokbang. Mokbang, less so, but that's just you're having an unhealthy relationship with food, right? But that's a separate conversation. But usually with almond moms, the concern is definitely eating disorder, which is one of the most lethal forms of mental illness. I think anorexia is unfortunately the king of fatalities when it comes to mental illness. Don't quote me on this, but some absurd percentage of people with anorexia and neurosia eventually die of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a pretty scary.
SPEAKER_00It's very scary. And we are not sure at this point definitively where it comes from. There is probably a combination of genetics, combination of like growing up and you know, nature versus nurture. It's always hard with mental illnesses, like how to definitively say what is the origin, but you know what doesn't help? Having an almond mom, right? That certainly doesn't help.
SPEAKER_01Well, and having public health messaging turn into like a very large almond mom, country's almond mom. We don't want to do more harm than good with our public health messaging.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's definitely a concern. And on the other end of the spectrum, the World Cup just happened, and there were a bunch of Japanese people, European peoples, people from all over the world visiting the US, and social media for that time was inundated with videos of I can't believe these are the American portion sizes. Have you seen these? I'm sure you've come across videos like those.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely a lot of commentary about other countries.
SPEAKER_00Now, some of it is clearly engagement bait. There are videos where they went to a Costco and it was like, I can't believe this is a portion size. Like, no, ma'am, that's a Costco. Like, everybody calm down. That's not the normal portion size. That's a Costco. It's bulk buying. But some are genuine. There are some places where it's I can't believe this is a sandwich, and it's like a big sandwich.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah. I mean, if you go to the Cheesecake Factory, you're like It's a big plate of pasta. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and America does have a culture of excess, especially when it comes to food. This is reflected on an epidemiological level by the obesity rates in the US. And culture is definitely something that is annoyingly resistant to intentional change. It's not something that you could sort of just turn on a dime. And there's two conversations I want to have regarding serving size. Both of them have to do with the connection or the lack thereof between weight and health. Because I think a lot of the serving size discussions are about like what is the quote unquote appropriate amount of food that you should eat, which, as we've said earlier, it is not a direction. It is not a moral judgment. It is simply a guide for how much people typically eat, which sometimes they are wrong, even. So yeah, let's talk about this a little bit because that's sort of the conversation when people think about serving size, they think about this, like, oh, are you eating too much, et cetera, et cetera?
SPEAKER_01You need better portion control, sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So there's two things I want to address. The first thing is the link between weight and health. Is there a connection between being overweight and health? And the answer is yes, but not in the way that you think. If you are on the obese side, your joints have to carry more weight than you otherwise would if you're not obese, and your joints might wear out faster than the average person's joints. If you are obese, you might have difficulty breathing when you're lying down. Like it is a risk factor for sleep apnea. Maybe you have difficulty exercising. So there are health connections with being overweight. Let me ask you this. What do you think most people think about when they think about weight and health?
SPEAKER_01I mean, people think that the larger your body, the less healthy you are. I think people think of it in sort of a linear way.
SPEAKER_00People think of it as a linear connection, and people are thinking about like, oh, like that means your heart is is not healthy, or that means that you have high cholesterol. And that is where sort of the message gets lost a little bit. There are people who are visually overweight but have normal cholesterol. That is very possible.
SPEAKER_01Right. And I think also it's where we start to talk a little bit about like body composition and like I mean, adipose tissue, fat tissue does have some like pretty negative health effects, um, especially like visceral fat, where it's really close to your organs. But you could have a thin person with a lot of visceral fat, and you can have a larger person with without as much. And then there's muscle and bone, and it gets, you know, weight is such a gross form of measurement. It's not nuanced.
SPEAKER_00Not nuanced at all. That's the thing I want to address is there is no linear connection and direct connection between weight and health. All the negative health effects of being overweight is a lot less dramatic than you think. You might have sleep apnea, probably not exercising as much if you're overweight, right? Those are the issues, but it's not just like if you're overweight, you are unhealthy. And you can see this in the mukbang videos. So I would argue that everyone who does that mukbang large calorie eating, all of those people are exhibiting unhealthy behaviors. But which comment is more toxic? It depends on how thin the person doing it is. That reveals the cultural aspect of weight. Like it's actually not purely scientific. It's image. It's if you're fat and you eat a bunch of Oreos, people will be like, oh, maybe you shouldn't do that. But if you're thin and you eat a bunch of Oreos, people are like, Oh, you had a bad day.
SPEAKER_01Like you're so relatable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We could keep repeating examples, but the point I'm trying to make is that the weight and health connection is more social than it is medical.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are like a lot of correlations, but there are also like many third variables involved in those correlations. And some of them are obvious, like, oh, people who eat a ton of calories may also eat a ton of saturated fat, which raises their LDL cholesterol. Yeah. But then there's also things like people who are in um people with less resources may be exposed to why can't I think of food scarcity and also trauma? And you've got these compounding variables. So you've got all these different things that are really negative for your health. And it's hard to like pull apart what is causing the health problems.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And the message I'll end on is this, which is weight is one factor. If you do this with anything else, you would sound insane. Like, for example, taller people statistically likely to die sooner than shorter people. But you wouldn't go around to everyone who's over six foot and be like, dang, you're not healthy, dude. You should have been shorter. It's one factor. Like height is one factor, weight is one factor, where you live is one factor, what race you are is one factor. And to have a direct link between one of those demographic factors and health, it's social. Like race is a social construct, so is weight, kind of.
SPEAKER_01And it's why it's weird when people get bent out of shape about the calories and nuts, because like you're only thinking about weight. And when we look at nut intake, it has a lot of positive health effects.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I let me rephrase. I forgot where I read this, but the most health risk for being overweight is that when you are in an emergency, it's harder for the EMTs to move you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or like if you're an emergency, if a cougar is chasing you, you probably won't outrun it, right? Like, those are like the more literal connection between weight and health. It's like, oh, if you're hanging off of a building, if you're overweight, you probably can't hang on as long as other people.
SPEAKER_01Well, and yeah, stigma equipment things aren't necessarily made um for people and like Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00There's that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, people's perception of you could guide care. There's like so many, so many variables.
SPEAKER_00There's so many things that are actual harms caused by your weight. That's not having to do with your body's internal functions at all. It's just people will look at you funny, and that's a health risk. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we all, regardless of weight, need to work on diet quality and like focus on nutrition in ways that we don't always have to go back to weight. It can just be about nutrients, right? Or other things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It is one factor. And also, this is just a little sad, but one of the early signs of most cancers is rapid weight loss. And sometimes a lot of people experience wap-it weight loss and they don't notice because they're happy about it. And they're like, oh my God, I lost a lot of weight. And it turns out it's just starting to have cancer.
SPEAKER_01Oh my God. The Cyclospora comments. I don't know if you're seeing this, but so many actually, no, no, I have to tell you this coconut cult thing. I have probably 50 or 60 comments of people being like, oh my God, I need to find this yogurt because everyone wants to induce foodborne illness. 50% people are constipated. 50% of people have like an eating disorder like joke. They're like, oh, this is hilarious. I need to buy this yogurt, lose a few pounds before the beach. I'm like, can you? I have heard this joke 80 times.
SPEAKER_00That's not a joke about those things. Like some people are actually dying from foodborne illnesses.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I both between the coconut cult and the cyclospora outbreak, I was like, I'm so sick of these comments about eating lettuce or yeah.
SPEAKER_00So maybe if you lose 20 pounds out of nowhere, you should probably go to the hospital because that's not a good sign. And the last thing I will say before we end is, and I want your opinion on this, because you're their again resident dietitian. When it comes to serving size, a lot of people will use the term, oh, you gotta control your portions according to serving size. I feel like it's almost never helpful because anytime you tell someone to control their portions or watch their serving size, it's the same reason why diets that's asking for sudden and deliberate change or diets that's asking for like black and white rules don't tend to last long because you're essentially asking someone to have this very rigid rule that they need to follow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and our bodies like it has kind of countermechanisms to make you it wants to be like in an equilibrium. So I would almost say the most sustainable like calorie deficit is the smallest one possible because if you fight it really hard, then like that's where people do start binge eating. And like it's restriction-it's not sustainable for one. No, it just doesn't work very easily. And there are a lot of different mental and physiological mechanisms and reasons why. Um, but yeah, that's just not advice that I typically I want to make it easier for people to like feel full on a more like reasonable amount of food, but I'm never like setting sharp limits unless there is a very real like health consideration or reason why, concrete reason.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm glad to have this validated because I've always felt comments like that of like, oh, eat according to the package serving size. And I'm like, anytime you have a rule, it just doesn't sound that good. Like, for example, I can only eat this eight-hour window, or I can only eat this amount of ice cream every day.
SPEAKER_01You become very hyper-fixated and you begin to like, that's where food noise you can like induce it is if you're like restricting too much, then all of a sudden your world becomes about like what am I eating next? And that's no fun. That's no fun.
SPEAKER_00Gotta have some balance, gotta have some composition. Like you said, we will end with this very important point, which is serving sizes are not directions.
SPEAKER_01No, not directions.