When it comes to food portions, things are not always what they seem. I always try to be diligent about reading nutrition labels and checking the sizes of my portions, but it can be incredibly confusing. What constitutes a serving of grains—one bagel or one slice of bread? How about fruit? It seems logical that a single apple would be a single serving, but the same certainly can’t be said for a single strawberry or grape. Meat is even more difficult. One steak is an incredibly imprecise unit of measurement, in my opinion.
One thing that makes it so hard to control our diet is that many people have a skewed understanding of correct food portions, and most food served to us in restaurants is practically super-sized—and getting bigger. It’s hard to judge just how much we’re supposed to be eating, when nutritionists tell us one thing, and labels tell us another. Exactly what does a serving of vegetables look like? We’re supposed to snack on nuts and fruit, but how much is too much? The bad news is that for most of our favorite things, the correct serving size is a lot smaller than what most of us currently eat, but the good news is that there are handy visual ways to think about portions.
Meat and Sweet Treats
For meat, the standard serving size is about three ounces. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Guide Pyramid recommends that we only eat two to three servings of meat or protein per day, so a fourteen-ounce steak from a restaurant would provide almost two days’ worth of protein. A serving of chicken, pork, or beef should be about the size of a deck of cards, or the size of your palm (minus the fingers).
Sweets might not be healthy, but everyone deserves dessert now and then. A deck of cards is also a good size approximation for a single serving of treats like cake and pie.
Steak photo courtesy of jwalsh (cc)
Playing card photo courtesy of ponchosqueal (cc)
Larger Fruits, Veggies, and Carbs
Try to eat baseball-sized servings of healthy vegetables, which equals about one cup. Raw leafy greens like spinach, broccoli, kale, and chard deserve a large portion size. A baseball is also a good way to imagine a proper serving of a semi-large fruit like strawberries, a single serving of soup, or a single serving of milk or yogurt.
Carbohydrates like cereal, oatmeal, and cooked pasta should also be measured by the cup—even less if you’re actively trying to lose weight.
Baseball photo courtesy of woolenium (cc)
Vegetables photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker (cc)
