We are a society being weighed down (literally) by the bigger is better motto. It’s pretty hard to miss the enormous portions you are served at restaurants and even harder to say no to a “great value.” So when the powers that be use mass marketing to convince us that it’s a better value to get the large Coke with your meal or that you’ll actually save money if you add the fries, you think, hey, at least I got my money’s worth. You may want to start to think twice before saying yes the next time the checkout girl asks you “Do you want to super size it?”
Bigger portions mean we typically eat 30 to 50 percent more then we would have with smaller portions, hungry or not. In the last two decades, portion size has dramatically increased. Pizza pies were ten inches in diameter back in the 1970s. Today the average size for a pizza is between sixteen and eighteen inches! Starbucks once offered the “short” cup of coffee at eight ounces, but it is no longer on the menu. The smallest cup you can order is the “tall.” At twelve ounces, this cup is nearly twice the size of what was once considered a regular cup of coffee. A Hershey chocolate bar weighed 0.6 ounces its first year on the market. The standard bar now weighs 1.6 ounces. That’s almost three times its original weight! Even diet food has grown in size; during the 1990s, Weight Watchers introduced their Smart Ones frozen meals with larger portion sizes. Lean Cuisine offered Hearty Portions, with one hundred more calories than the original meal.
There are not many of us out there who order a meal out and ask the waiter, “Can you downsize my meal please,” something we should all consider doing more of. Here are a few suggestions to help you start downsizing today. At the beginning of a meal out, ask for a to-go box and pack up half your meal for lunch tomorrow. Not only will you save yourself from being super full tonight, but also you’ll be really happy not having to think about what is for lunch tomorrow. I am a big fan of the cook once, eat two to three times idea—just not all in one sitting.
When eating in and cooking extra, be sure to dole out one or two extra portions into Tupperware and put them in the fridge before you even sit to eat. You may not be so inclined to reach for a second serving then.
Try not to snack straight from the container or package and certainly not standing over the kitchen sink. Putting a snack portion into a small bowl or on a plate will help you eat less; taking the time to sit and eat helps the body register that it is being fed and avoids mindless eating.
Want to know just how out of proportion your portion sizes are? Measure out a serving of pasta or rice, typically a half-cup cooked, or look at the size of your lean protein at dinner tonight, which should be the size of a deck of cards. What size do you see? Start to look at labels to get a better idea of what exactly a portion size should look like. And remember, when it comes to food and size of our backsides, bigger is not always better.
Statistics taken from The Portion Teller, by Lisa R. Young, PhD, RD.