Per 100 g vs per serving: the arithmetic on the pack
Read the per 100 g column. It is the only one that is a fact about the food. The serving size beside it is a number the manufacturer chose, and choosing a small one makes every figure in that column look reassuring without changing what is in the packet.
This is not a trick in the sense of being against the rules. Indian labelling requires a per 100 g or per 100 ml column precisely so that comparison is possible, and the per-serving column is allowed alongside it. The problem is that the front of the pack usually advertises the serving figure and the back is where the comparable one lives.
A worked example
A biscuit pack declares 53 kcal per serving, and defines a serving as two biscuits, about 12 g. The packet holds sixteen biscuits.
Eat half the packet — eight biscuits, which is not an unusual sitting — and you have had 212 kcal, four servings, not 53. Across the whole packet the sugar comes to roughly 24 g, about six teaspoons. Nothing on the label is false. The arithmetic was simply left to you, and the number printed largest is the one that flatters.
The same shape shows up on protein bars, where a bar can be labelled per 40 g while weighing 60 g, so the protein claim is understated and the sugar figure is too. An audit of protein bars sold in India found only four of 119 were genuinely sugar-free once the ingredient list was read rather than the front of the wrapper.
How to convert in your head
You rarely need precision. Two shortcuts cover most packs:
- Serving to 100 g:if the serving is about 30 g, multiply by three. If it is about 50 g, double it. If it is 12 g like the biscuit above, multiply by eight.
- 100 g to the packet:multiply by the pack weight in hundreds of grams. A 200 g packet is twice the per-100 g figure, whatever the serving column says.
The second one is the more useful habit, because the question that actually matters is not what is in 100 g but what is in the amount you are about to eat.
Why LabelSaaf scores per 100 g
A score has to be comparable between two packs a shopper is holding, and a serving size is not comparable to anything — two biscuit brands can declare different servings for the same biscuit. So the rubric reads the per-100 g column, and every threshold behind the score is defined per 100 g.
Where a pack prints only a per-serving column, the values are converted before scoring and the verdict says the conversion happened. The conversion carries a small confidence penalty, because a declared serving weight is one more thing that can be misprinted, and a score built on a converted number should not claim the same certainty as one read directly.
Drinks are scored per 100 ml of the prepared drink rather than per 100 g of powder, for the same reason: a powder figure and a glass are not the same question. How the score is calculated has the detail.
What this looks like on real packs
Per 100 g, from labels we have read, described by category.
Each of these is routinely sold in packs where the serving column shows a third or an eighth of the figure above, and the serving column is the one printed in bold.
Common questions
Is a small serving size illegal?
No. Manufacturers set their own serving sizes, and there is no mandated portion for most categories in India. That is exactly why the per-100 g column exists and why it is the one to read.
Which column do the percentages refer to?
Usually the serving. A label showing "12% of daily requirement" beside a 12 g serving is describing 12 g, not the packet. Check which column the percentage sits under before trusting it.
What about per-piece labelling?
Some packs declare per piece — a single biscuit, one bar. Treat it as a serving column with an even smaller unit, and convert to 100 g before comparing it with anything.
Next: how much sugar per 100 g is too much, and how to read the rest of the label.
Photograph the nutrition table on a pack and get a score out of 100, with the reason behind every point.
Scan a label