Servings and Remainders

It's Girl Scout Cookie time!  I confess, I'm a sucker for enterprising young people spending their free time to raise money for their organization.  It also helps that their cookies are so delicious.  (Especially the Samoas--I know the box says they're Caramel DeLites, but it lies.  They are, and forever shall be, Samoas.)

Since I'm the kind of parent who feels like any conversation has the potential to be a learning opportunity for my kiddo, when we opened this box of Samoas, I asked Tyler to guess what the suggested serving size would be.  He guessed (correctly) that it would be two.  We then chatted about how it's really important to stay active and how exercise is an essential part of staying healthy, but that it was also important to make sure you don't overeat because then you might still be unhealthy.  And yes, I understand the irony of a slightly chubby mom having this conversation with her rail thin, super muscular kid.  He may not always be so active... 

 A few days later he asked me, "Mom, if the serving size is two, WHY do they give you a box with 15?  Then there's a remainder and someone doesn't get all their serving."  (They were learning division with remainders in school that week.)  What a great question!  I figure that if they're going to have a serving size, it should be appropriate to what they give you in the container size, especially if it's something so easy to control the amount/number of.  I could see if they didn't count out each individual M&M or grape, but cookies?  That's just lazy.  So we bought another box to be sure there were no remainders.