Actual reason? Not sure because I wasn’t around for the comment period.
Likely reason? People are terrible at making decisions based on ranges or anything more complex than a single number. They aren’t even that good at a single number.
Since mixed things like trail mix can have some variety in ratio from bag to bag, going with an average and some variance means having some kind of flexibility. Then there are vegetables and other plants that can vary wildly too.
But what about something like gummy bears where the whole thing is very consistent? Can’t have different rules for different foods, because companies will tie the whole thing up in court.
So the end result is a rule that allows flexibility for the things that actually need it that is also applied to everything else for simplicity.
Why doesn’t the FDA require companies to put a range instead of an exact number then?
Actual reason? Not sure because I wasn’t around for the comment period.
Likely reason? People are terrible at making decisions based on ranges or anything more complex than a single number. They aren’t even that good at a single number.
Since mixed things like trail mix can have some variety in ratio from bag to bag, going with an average and some variance means having some kind of flexibility. Then there are vegetables and other plants that can vary wildly too.
But what about something like gummy bears where the whole thing is very consistent? Can’t have different rules for different foods, because companies will tie the whole thing up in court.
So the end result is a rule that allows flexibility for the things that actually need it that is also applied to everything else for simplicity.