Food portions: A lot bigger than they used to be
Posted
May 22 2008, 01:42 PM
by
Karen Datko
Remember that old expression "My eyes are bigger than my stomach"? The fact is that if we see it, we'll eat it. Combine that with the fact that the size of pizza slices, burgers, bagels, soft drinks, movie popcorn and a lot of other foods has grown in the last 20 years, and you'll begin to understand why so many Americans are overweight. Even plates are bigger.
Seeing is believing, and pictorial proof of portion inflation can be found at Liz Monte's post, "Portion size, then and now," at Divine Caroline.
Two decades ago, two slices of pizza had 500 calories. Now, they're a lot bigger, with a robust 850 calories. "Those extra 350 calories, if eaten two times a month, would put on 2 extra pounds a year, or 40 pounds in the next two decades," Liz writes.
She compares the typical movie popcorn container of yesteryear (270 calories) with the tub lots of folks wolf down now (630 calories). Remember what we said about you'll eat it if you see it? Liz writes, "Studies indicate that when given food in larger containers, people will consume more."
Apparently, we don't even know we're overeating. Liz says today's bagel actually contains three servings of bread. Even when we're preparing our own food, we making it bigger. A serving of cereal at home is 20% larger than it was 20 years ago, she says.
Do we have the willpower to downsize our portions -- which would reduce our spending and our weight? A National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute .pdf illustrates what normal portions look like, if we're interested. Liz adds, "It's unlikely that we'll see a scaling down of food to these sizes anytime soon, so perhaps we should all become familiar with another image: the doggy bag."
