Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Screw you, Otis.


Okay, so I'm not a total idiot. I know that a muffin is not a great breakfast choice. But I had to take Munchkin to an appointment this morning and had to grab something on the go. So a banana nut muffin it was. It seemed the best of a lot of bad choices.

I had taken a precursory glance at the label when I bought it but it wasn't until I put the calorie information into my food journal that I noticed something quite important.

The serving size was for only half a muffin. Yes, that's right -- half.

So by eating the entire muffin, I had a 760 calorie breakfast. Half of my day's calories in a not that big and not so great tasting muffin. Holy schnikeys.

What the hell is wrong with Otis Spunkmeyer for making an on-the-go food item -- and a fairly messy one at that -- where the serving size is half? Who eats half a muffin? How the heck can you evenly split a crumbly muffin? Who advised them that this was a good idea? The only explanation I can cotton to is that it's done deliberately to mislead the buyer/eater about how many worthless calories they are actually eating.

Well, screw you, Otis. If I didn't think ill of muffins before, I certainly do now.

5 comments:

Bette said...

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I'm positive that food companies do this to lull us into eating more crap with less guilt.

Label reading is what got me to feel OK about chucking granola bars in favor of Snickers bars -- for the same amount of calories, I'd just as soon have something that doesn't pretend to be healthy (and that I actually enjoy!).

kimba said...

When it comes to the food industry, my tin-foil hat is ALWAYS on. Sneaky bastards.

Maewen Archer said...

I used to buy these single packaged cookies that were really good -- until I realized there were FOUR servings per cookie. I never bought one again.

(I've been lurking for a while -- found you through ADOD. Love your writing!)

Susan said...

They do it because they KNOW no one would buy and eat a 760 calorie muffin.
They're not the only ones...keep checking labels and you'll be surprised at the portion sizes for some things...like who eats 1/2 cup of cereal for breakfast? That barely even covers the bottom of the bowl.

kimba said...

Oh, and furthermore...!

What is the story on the name "Spunkmeyer"?

I won't continue.