The “zero-calorie” PAM cooking spray in your pantry might be quietly adding pounds to your waistline. If that sounds impossible, it’s because a loophole in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) labeling rules lets companies play a cynical numbers game with serving sizes.
Federal regulators, in their wisdom, allow anything under five calories per serving to be labeled as “0 calories.” So manufacturers routinely shrink their stated serving sizes to laughably tiny portions—a “1/4 second spray” in PAM’s case—to squeeze under the five-calorie cutoff.
While 1,117 servings in a 12-oz can is comical, do the math across an entire can and the picture stops being so funny.
A 12oz can of PAM boasts 1,117 servings of 0.25 grams. That’s a total of 279.25 grams. According to online sources, 100 grams of PAM cooking spray original has 792 calories, so an entire 12oz can has roughly 2,200 calories. Only in Washington could 2,200 calories pass for zero!
Now consider a family’s usage. A household that sprays a breakfast pan most days, along with a surface or two for dinner, will consume six to eight cans of PAM per year, quietly delivering 13,200 to 17,600 calories. That translates into as much as five pounds of fat annually from ONE product advertised as “zero-calorie.”
Why can a company get away with calling something “zero” that clearly isn’t? Our labeling laws are stuck in a truth-defying time warp. The FDA says (21 CFR 101.9 and § 101.60(b)(1)) food that is not zero calories can be listed as zero, as long as it is under five calories per serving. Rather than require a realistic serving size, the law invites companies to shrink the serving until the calories round down to zero—never mind that nobody uses a quarter-second spray in real life. It’s a calorie shell game, and consumers lose (while waistlines gain).
This sleight of hand is not unique to PAM. Other examples include:
- I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Spray lists zero calories per “spray” even though a 12-oz bottle contains 1,160 calories.
- Stevia In The Raw, a sweetener, touts zero calories on the box, while its website pegs a packet at about four calories.
- Splenda’s own spec notes roughly four calories per packet, while the label reads zero.
- Even the timeless Tic Tac takes advantage of this loophole. A single Tic Tac serving in the U.S. is one mint and zero calories. Venture north to Canada, and the same box of Tic Tacs lists a reasonable serving size of four mints and 10 calories.
Other countries rejected this façade long ago. The European Union requires every label to show nutrition per 100g or 100ml alongside any per-portion information, so a spray oil can’t hide behind fairy-dust servings. Australia and New Zealand, meanwhile, require per-serve and per-100g panels and scrutinize unrealistic serving sizes. The upshot is transparency: a shopper can see at a glance what they’re really buying.
We shouldn’t need to bring a calculator to the grocery store to make healthy decisions.
In America, by contrast, federal policy blesses the deception. It is legal and common for “zero-calorie” labels to mask hundreds or thousands of calories. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and there’s no such thing as a truly calorie-free cooking spray.
Politicians love to talk about “common-sense reforms.” Here is one: zero should mean zero.
The solution is straightforward: bring U.S. labeling standards into the 21st century. At a minimum, the FDA should require nutritional information per 100g/100ml on all labels, in addition to per-serving data. This simple addition would instantly reveal the real nutritional load of products. If a bottle of “zero-calorie” cooking spray actually contains the equivalent of two days’ worth of fat and a full day of calories, consumers will see it, and brands will have to drop the charade.
There’s no Big Government vs. Free Market clash here; there is nothing “nanny state” about insisting that 2,000 calories of canola oil not be marketed as zero. If the government’s own rules are fueling a lie, then correcting that lie is as pro-consumer and pro-freedom as it gets.
Forge ahead with dual-column nutrition labeling (per serving and per 100g) and enforce honest serving sizes that reflect actual use. America often prides itself on having the world’s best consumer standards—yet on food labels, we’re lagging behind international norms of honesty. It’s time to catch up.
James Carter is a Principal with Navigators Global. He previously headed President-elect Donald Trump’s tax team during the 2016-17 transition and served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (2002-06). Brady Walczak is a U.S. Senate aide.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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