You've Been Served

Trigger-happy? Get ready for sticker-shock.

I'm crushed. All these years I was feeling so virtuous, spraying my pans with Pam or its generic knock-offs, dreaming of all those cumulative thousands of calories I was saving. But those lying liars at ConAgra Foods (oh, and Campbell's, Nestle, Haagen-Dazs...) were, quite simply, lying about calories.


Zero calories, zero fat in a "serving" of Pam? Sure, if your definition of "serving" is a spray that lasts a quarter of a second. If, like most sentient humans, you hold that spray button down for, say, six seconds--long enough to actually get a non-stick coating onto the surface of the pan--you'll be taking in 50 calories and 6 grams of fat. And I'm saying, Hell, I coulda used butter (literally: a half-tablespoon of butter is 50 calories) and added some actual flavor--not ersatz "butter flavor," as Pam puts it.


The Center for Science in the Public Interest is serving papers to the FDA demanding that the agency start doing its job and policing the avaricious food companies that persist in telling dangerous untruths--life-threatening untruths. Because obesity and high blood pressure are killing millions of people who read the label on a can of Campbell's soup and think they're eating a serving that contains 790 milligrams of sodium, when in fact they're taking in twice as many. When was the last time you considered a half-cup of soup a "serving"? That is--I kid you not--8 tablespoons. Please. That's lunch?

Emotional eating just got more fattening.

And, be honest, when was the last time you considered a half-cup a serving of ice cream? Haagen-Dazs measures it that way. But if you eat a cup instead, you've just ingested a full day's recommended limit of saturated fat. And if you were on the Dumped-Again Diet and stood in front of the fridge until you finished a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (yes, people, it does happen!) that's two full days of sat fat. And fat is what you will be. Much like the wallets of the food-company CEOs.