Remember the good ol’ days when junk food tried to make itself seem healthier? To compete against stuff that’s actually good for you, they’d play with the nutritional facts a little bit. They’re not statistics—the numbers aren’t flexible—but the producers would decrease the serving size. Lower amount of food per serving = lower amount of bad stuff in the nutritional facts = junk food is on the verge of being good for you!
Most people know that’s a load of crap now. Looking at the servings and the serving size gives you a much better idea of how much sugar, sodium and empty calories you’ll be chugging down in a 20-oz bottle of Mountain Dew. (I don’t care what Pepsico says, I’ve never thought, “Gosh, that’s enough for me, maybe I should put the second half of this bottle in the fridge until later.”)
Technically, Mars adjusted the serving size on this package of 3 Musketeers bars as well. It’s a “Snack Time Pack” that has six fun-size bars in it. Imagine how small those numbers are, right? So I looked at the nutritional facts and saw that they were really high. “190 calories? 20% of the daily recommended amount of saturated fat?!” Then I looked at the serving size: 3 bars. Two servings per container.
Mars isn’t concerned with how nutritional these 3 Musketeers bars aren’t because they know that once a person pops one into his mouth, the most likely way he’ll burn off some of those calories is immediately ripping open the other five wrappers.
