Minor indignation has greeted the news that Marks & Spencer labels some of its teeny salads as “for two”, meaning the calorie count (and fat, salt, all the good stuff) on the nutritional information is halved. The salads are “primarily designed as a side for a main meal”, M&S told the Times.
Your lunch is already off track when you are masticating your way through a plastic pot of roughage; splitting it with someone would be worse than any sharing plate standoff. In the interests of journalistic rigour, I tested a dainty M&S “Serves 2 Supergreen Salad” and, honestly, two sporks duelling among the “verdant mix” of cucumber and edamame would be carnage. You would both end up coated in “fruity ginger dressing”. I wouldn’t trust two of my bantams to share it.
Recommended serving sizes are ridiculous. A Which? survey in May highlighted a few that cause confusion: a portion of Quality Street is two, apparently, a tube of Pringles is between six and seven servings. No one in the history of breakfast has ever eaten the recommended amount of cereal– it’s not worth getting out of bed for. Worse even than cereal are “serves two” fresh pasta packets. Half is tragic – that’s what, eight ravioli? – while the whole packet is marginally too much. You are left with a pathetic thimbleful to put in the fridge or, more likely, eat 10 minutes later. According to Which?, some M&S tortellini packets claim to serve three. Three what? Sylvanians?
We are understandably confused about how much to eat, bamboozled by vast restaurant portions and plate size inflation, and hardwired to choose the biggest slice. “It’s tempting to pick the biggest baked potato at the supermarket,” I read in Bupa’s portion guidelines (which also include a dramatically disappointing recreation of what constitutes a “handful” of nuts). I would describe it as an achievement: if you don’t get that hunter-gatherer high from selecting your tuber, you are doing it wrong. But weaselly serving sizes make us all more confused. The last thing we need is to be gaslighted by meal deals.
