Most people rely on intuition to determine what counts as a “single” serving of a meal or snack.
But as many have learned, that’s not always the best approach.
Some have been surprised to find that a box of Velveeta mac & cheese contains five servings, a Crumbl cookie is meant to be eaten in quarters, and a frozen pizza is supposedly six servings.
Well, at least you’d expect one burrito to equal one serving, but apparently, that’s not always the case.
Reddit user u/Brumblest found this out the hard way when he purchased a frozen burrito at the gas station, expecting it to be a hassle-free lunch.
His post in the subreddit r/TikTokCringe, which has racked up 2,300 upvotes and over 650 comments, calls out just how unrealistic some food labels can be.
What went wrong?
“I’m at work and I’m about to heat myself up this Bomb burrito,” he begins.
Upon looking at the label, it seems like a reasonable choice to u/Brumblest.
“270 calories—that’s pretty good for a burrito, right?” he says. But then he takes a closer look at the label.
“And then I look a little closer, and there are three servings per container.”
He pauses before asking, “Who the [expletive] is heating themselves up a Bomb burrito—let’s be clear, gas station food—and going, ‘I’m just gonna eat a third of it?’”
The instructions also make no sense
The burrito’s serving size isn’t the only issue for u/Brumblet.
The instructions tell the buyer to microwave it from thawed, which the Reddit poster thinks completely defeats the purpose of grabbing a frozen meal for convenience.
“Who the [expletive] has the forethought about a Bomb burrito to be like, ‘Hm, let me thaw this out in the fridge. I’m gonna need this burrito tomorrow’?” he asks.
For him, this isn’t meal prep; it’s emergency food. It’s cheap, quick, and meant to be heated up as soon as you’re hungry, not after a long defrosting process.
“Why do I need to defrost this burrito just to follow your instructions?” he asks. “Just tell me how to cook it from frozen.”
By the end of the video, he’s fed up with the unnecessary steps and misleading calorie count.
“Most useless packaging I’ve ever seen in my [expletive] life. 5 out of 7,” he concludes.
Are his claims true?
What u/Brumblest says in the video checks out. A beef ‘The Bomb’ burrito, made by Don Miguel, is labeled as three servings per package.
With one serving listed at 270 calories, eating the whole thing adds up to 810 calories in one sitting.
Considering the recommended daily intake is around 2,200 calories for men and 1,800 for women, that could be considered high for a single meal for most people.
That also adds up to 72 percent of the recommended daily sodium intake and 45 percent of the recommended daily fat intake, based on the Nutritional Facts Panel of the Dong Miguel burrito.
Why do they do this?
byu/Brumblest inTikTokCringe
Commenters share their thoughts
In the comments section, users debated whether misleading serving sizes were a corporate trick or just an unfortunate byproduct of labeling regulations.
One person pointed out the differences in food labeling laws.
“Sorry to dunk on you Americans, but that’s precisely why the EU has laws that calorie amounts have to be standardized and be given for 100g amounts every time,” they wrote.
Another user pushed back, arguing that the FDA does have regulations in place but that some companies find ways around them.
“We do have standardizations set by the FDA. People in this thread have no clue what they’re talking about,” they stated. “Serving sizes are set according to how much people typically eat. Some companies (like those making a random gas station burrito, for example) may classify their food under a weird category so that it looks like this, and the goal here may be to deceive the customer. But the FDA does have rules just because the rules are sometimes broken/pushed doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
Others said they weren’t surprised at all. “I guessed when he said there were 270 calories it would be 3 servings,” one person wrote. “Yeah a lot of packages break it up so they don’t have to write the full # of calories and they can break it up to make it appear it’s lower than it actually is.. gets weird sometimes.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to u/Brumblest through the Reddit chat and Don Miguel via email.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
