I agreee, ridiculous at first glance. However, if you buy pickle spears, they are actually cut into quarters. So this may just be an example of over-uniformity of packaging. So there is a legit "quarter-pickle" serving out htere.

Still, I usually eat at least four pickle spears.

A theory: sometimes, restaurants only provide a single lengthwise-quartered sliver of pickle with your sammitch. Restaurants are also more likely to be purchasing extra-large jars of things. So maybe this is some kind of outstretched hand from Vlassic to their restauranteur cousins.

Who in the world only eats one-quarter pickle?

Fashion models and my grandmother.

Ha ha haaa... that cat is awesome.

MattyMatt, I think you have it, but backwards. The restaurant standard allows Vlasic to legitimately cut down on the serving size and therefore the calorie count.

Restaurants are just cheap.

Clearly Vlasic needs to change their serving portions, as I usually eat them by the jar. The juice, I would like to know the calorie count on that too, because that is really tasty.

Definitely, DeadSnake. I'd imagine it's not too much higher above that for water, though... I have no idea.

I always assumed that they did that so that the sodium levels didn't look too terrifying. One whole pickle is like, 1000% of your recommended daily allowance of sodium (ok, I just looked at my pickle container and its really ~60% per whole pickle - but still).

Never mind that--- I've seen bags of chips -- the ones you buy out of a vending machine-- that claim to be 2 servings.

That's a little more than an ounce of chips. And I don't know if it still true but a 16oz coke bottle used to claim 2 servings as well.

A 20oz bottle of Mountain Dew is 2.5 servings. Go figure.

Well heck yeah. Don't you pour yourself a nice little 8 oz. glass of Mountain Dew and put the rest in the fridge? What's wrong with you?

Incidentally, my 20 oz bottle of Diet 7Up is also 2.5 servings. You would think with 0 calories, 0 carbs, etc. they would just go ahead and let you have one bottle as a serving.

I think 8oz of any drink is considered a serving because a glass of water is 8oz.

The anti-duplicate post thing is nifty.

I've always wondered if they count the juice on the nutrition label, or just the pickles themselves.

Mmmmmmm... pickle juice.

According to most airlines, a serving of pretzels is about .00129 oz.

That is the best cat that I've ever seen. The pickle is merely average.

Pickle juice as a sports drink

...and as usual on Consumerist discussing foodstuffs, now I have a craving for a pickle. Dammit.

Dr. Freud would like to have a word with all of you.

I think that certain food-products have a certain standardized food size, e.g. 1 serving = x ounces.

Note this PDF from the USDA that talks about it: http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Insights/Insight22.PDF

and this one from Discovery Health, which gives actual numbers: http://health.discovery.com/centers/articles/articles.html...

So, you can blame someone (the USDA) for doing standardized serving sizes.

Remember when the nutrition labels were standardized? This is all part of that standardization.

So what's the standard serving size for one of those little gherkins?

So I had to buy pickles after this post yesterday, and on the label, it said the serving size was '1 spear'.

But what was even more freaky, was that it has zero calories per serving.

It is all blank except the sodium part.

actually the "serving size" has nothing to do with the amount you should eat. it's more of a standard on a per-food type basis. example: all cereal has a 1/2 cup serving size. that's so you can compare all the nutrition facts on all cerials without doing any math. it also prevents false advertising on nutrition facts because that food has a really small serving size compared to others of it's type. I beleive all cookies have a 2 cookie serving size for the same reason. they are not saying you should only have 2 cookies, just letting you know what is in there per 2 cookies.