I do think the design of the labels is completely ridiculous, though. Sugar, trans fats, and caloric count should be made much more prominent and put in red so that uninformed people understand that these are the primary causes of sickness in America.

Most things must show the amount per serving and the amount per 100g (in common across the EU), but they also show a chart with green/orange/red based on a typical serving size.

Example: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/304/media/images/61458000/jpg/...

The hypothesis here being what? Lack of red highlighting in informative tables is the cause for uninformedness? :)

Obviously, it's easier to compare if they are all relative to 100g, but arguably per-serving is more useful when making eating decisions. When I'm buying a food, I'm not trying to do science; I'm trying to figure out how much of a particular nutrient I'm personally going to get when I eat that item.

For example, if I have soup, there's no way I'll have as little as 100g of it. If I have tea, there's no way I'm going to have as much as 100g of tea leaves. The mass of a serving could be 1 or even 2 orders of magnitude different depending on the type of food.

Serving sizes are required by law to be "based on amounts of foods and beverages that people are actually eating" (see https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocument... ).

In fact, I think that's now the norm in the whole of the EU.

If the two-serving brand is also advertised as low sodium and consumers don't notice that the serving size is half as big, that's gonna seem to be much lower sodium than it really is.

Worse is that many products have bogus information. I'm not talking just about the inexactness of the methods, but in many cases the macronutrient math doesn't add up.

Total calories should be about (protein + carb)x4 + (fat)x9. Too often, it isn't close. I was comparing two versions within a product line yesterday (chili with beans vs without beans), and the calorie count for one mismatched the macronutrient breakdown by almost 10%.

water, pea protein isolate, oil blend (canola oil, flaxseed oil, palmoil, sunflower oil, dha algal oil), methylcellulose, carrageenan, potassium bicarbonate, caramel color†, yeast extract, maltodextrin, potassium chloride, tapioca starch, sorbitol, calcium chloride, natural flavoring, spices, salt, vegetable extract mix (spinach, broccoli, carrot, tomato, beet, shiitake mushroom), l-cysteine hydrochloride, beetjuice powder (flavor and color), natural hickory smoke concentrate, calcium sulfate, onion powder, onion extract, mesquite powder, sugar‡, pomegranate seed powder, ferric phosphate (iron), paprika extract (spice and color), garlic extract, cyanocobalamin (vitamin b12)

Which makes them pretty bad, even worst for dieting.

Curious, how do you normally figure out the phosphorus content ? Is there a guideline somewhere that gives you an adequate estimate ?

Beyond thing I have few tricks to get a estimate but mostly for those things I don't know the numbers well, I eat in moderation.

I could go grab two brands of non-meat burger patty off the shelves right now, and one will be 25% carbs, and one 6%. It's ridiculous.