Serving Sizes on Packages Should be Realistic, FDA Says

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Calorie counts and other vital nutrition information should be posted on the front of food packages, and the serving sizes should reflect how much people actually eat, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA wants to make the changes because official serving sizes on many packaged foods are too small, which means the calorie counts that go with them are often misleading, The New York Times reported.

Giving people accurate servings sizes and calories counts may convince them to go easy on foods like chips, ice cream, breakfast cereals and cookies.

"If you put on a meaningful portion size, it would scare a lot of people. They would see, 'I'm going to get 300 calories from that, or 500 calories'," Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina, told The Times.