Serving sizes and general confusion

6+ servings per day of breads and cereals say the Ministry of Health, which is a nice enough recommendation. I do wonder, however, how many people are caught with the differences between servings and servings.

A serving of bread from the Ministry of Health is one slice of bread, or more specifically, one slice/26grams of medium bread. A serving size of bread from the label of a bread is often two slices of medium bread.

One slice of bread equates to around 55kcals and 11.3grams of available carbohydrate (NZ Food Composition Tables). Having six servings of bread based off the manufacturers 'serving' can result in 330kcals per day additional energy. Which is rather significant considering obesity can ultimately occur due to very small daily differences in energy balance.

This is not even going into the disparity of the Ministry's own recommendations that one serving of bread or cereal can be a bread roll (50g - 123kcals), a muffin ('assorted toasted' 80g - 165kcal), 1 cup of rice (cooked - 144g - 118kcal) or 1cup of pasta (cooked - 150g - 194kcal)

And yes, I know that the Ministry of Health use the disclaimer "They are not intended to be used and followed rigidly" but when their examples provide a range of 55 - 194kcal per serving, then people are going to have a problem.