Portion Sizes

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-15-2004
Portion Sizes
5
Thu, 03-04-2004 - 11:18pm

Heres and interesting article that sort of ties into the book we're reading:


Attack of the Giant Killer Food
By Michael Fumento
Copyright 1997 by Michael Fumento



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For Homer Simpson or a cliché cop, it's a dream. I have before me a doughnut just smaller than a dinner plate, many times larger than the current average American doughnut that in turn is larger than doughnut sizes from two decades ago. And while this preposterous pastry might seem like a dream to some, dinosaur doughnuts are representative of one of the major causes of a growing American nightmare.

We are the fattest people on earth.

We are suffering an epidemic of obesity. An estimated 300,000 Americans a year die from obesity-related causes. Obesity greatly increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and other diseases that kill, along with a host of diseases that don't kill but can make life miserable.

For example, a 5'4" woman who is merely 44 pounds overweight doubles her risk of breast cancer and more than doubles her risk of the most common form of stroke. You may have heard the expression "fat, but fit." Sorry, but there's no such animal.

There's more bad news. Our eating and exercise habits have made Americans the fattest people on earth. Fifteen years ago, a fourth of us were considered obese. Now it's a third. Three-fourths of us are heavier than optimum health allows.

And no, it's not just doughnuts doing us in. Monster muffins are now commonly sold in sizes seven times larger than they once were. The original McDonald's hamburger, bun included, weighed 3.7 ounces. Then came the Quarter Pounder at six ounces and the Big Mac at 7.6 ounces. The recently introduced Arch Deluxe tips the scale at almost nine ounces.

The Green Burrito chain sells its namesake in three-pound portions, while Little Caesar's boasts pizzas it claims are "bigger than the sun." It's only a slight exaggeration.

By one estimate, nearly 25% of the $97 billion American consumers spent on fast food in 1995 went for items promoted on the basis of larger size or extra ingredients.

All You Can Eat (and Then Some)

But fast food, just like doughnuts, is only part of the obesity equation. The Cheesecake Factory restaurants heap pasta helpings so high that Sir Edmund Hillary would have trouble climbing to the top, and even makers of the Lean Cuisine, whose meals presumably are for people watching their weight, have introduced new hefty portions that are 50 percent larger.

More ominous yet is the tremendous growth in steakhouses. In 1995, two of the top 20 fastest-growing chain restaurants were steakhouses. These restaurants commonly sell porterhouses at 28 ounces, not to mention the accompanying french fries or potato with globs of sour cream and butter. At new Brazilian steakhouses that are springing up, you're not even limited to that. For $15.99 or so you can just keep eating meat until your belly-button pops out and hits a busboy in the eye.

GIANT FOODS COMPARISON

Item Maker of Giant Size Calories in Giant Size Calories in Regular Size
Muffins Local shop 705 158
Steak and fries Outback Steakhouse 2,060 730
Cookie Local shop 493 65
Ice cream cone Local shop 625 160
Nachos Local shop 1,650 569
Cinnamon bun Cinnabon Inc. 800 109
Hot dog Oscar Mayer 350 150
Fast-food meal McDonald's* 1,310 680
*Specialty meal comprising a bacon double cheeseburger, supersize fries & a 32-ounce soda
Table Source: Prevention Magazine


Drink sizes are also skyrocketing. The original Coca-Cola bottles held six ounces. Then it jumped to eight ounces, then 16, and now bottles from machines offer 20 ounces of carbonated pleasure. By contrast, standard bottles in Europe hold about eight ounces.

Many convenience stores in the United States now sell drinks in bucket-size, 64-ounce cups that pack more than 800 calories. One wonders if the lids are to keep the contents from spilling or the consumer from accidentally falling in.

Portions of Massive Proportions

If you're pondering why Americans are so much fatter than Europeans, look no further than portion sizes. Consider a popular European chocolate bar, the Ballisto. It comes in only one size: 20 grams. The regular American Butterfinger weighs three times as much – and that wasn't enough for Americans, so Nestle came out with the "king size" Butterfinger that is more than 50 percent larger.

Even this didn't satisfy American appetites, so Nestle created the aptly named "Butterfinger Beast." At seven times the size of a Ballisto, it's a wonder some cities haven't outlawed them as lethal weapons.

Europeans are painfully aware of our obsession with outlandish serving sizes of food. "It doesn't take much expertise to figure out the story behind the statistics," said British writer William Langley. "By the comparatively restrained standards of the rest of the world, American portion sizes border on the obscene."

"They train the stomach to expect a big meal and to cope with a big meal," added Andrew Prentice, a nutritionist at Britain's Medical Research Council.

Quantity not Quality

"In Europe, people have a sense of satisfaction with good food, and they don't tend to overeat," said Martha Rose Shulman, a cookbook author who recently moved to the United States from France. Europeans look more for quality in food. But to Americans, quantity has a quality all its own.

7-Eleven shouldn't be selling 64-ounce drinks. That sends all the wrong signals. If people need 64 ounces of soda (and somehow they never used to), let them buy two cups at 32 ounces.

Penny-wise and Pound Foolish

On the other hand, there have been no reported cases of a 7-Eleven employee forcing a customer to buy such a drink, and nobody is forced to eat 28-ounce steaks at gunpoint.

So why do we do it?

Part of the reason is that oversize portions of food are cheaper by the ounce than smaller portions. We are literally penny-wise and pound-foolish.

But perhaps the main reason for this American obsession is that it provides an excuse to pig out. After all, it's just one burger – even if it could feed the population of a small African town for a week.

In this era of self-indulgence, in which traditional values are sneered at, we have replaced the motto "everything in moderation" with "nothing succeeds like excess." Terms like "sloth" and "glutton" sit behind the barn with the rusty old Studebaker.

The obesity epidemic is symptomatic of a much larger national problem, and solving it is going to take changes in society that go way beyond food.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-13-2003
In reply to: lucyfan81
Thu, 03-04-2004 - 11:45pm
In the past 2 years when I've visited the US, I can never finish my meals, and I'm completely nauseated when my food comes, simply because what is on one plate looks like about 3 times the food I eat total in ONE DAY. Portion sizes aren't much smaller in Canada...I still leave food on my plate at restaurants when I'm full, but rarely as much.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-15-2004
In reply to: lucyfan81
Fri, 03-05-2004 - 10:12am
Exactly. I was in France a couple of years ago and when the food came I remember thinking that it wasnt very much, but it was more than enough to fill me up. Yesterday I went out to lunch and had a shrimp salad, the LUNCH PORTION and by the time I was full it didnt even look like I had eaten any of it.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-07-2004
In reply to: lucyfan81
Fri, 03-05-2004 - 11:02am
One of the things my friend and I do when we go out is look at the people who are getting their food as we are looking at the menu. Then we decide together what we would like to share and go for that. Many places let you do that now.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
In reply to: lucyfan81
Fri, 03-05-2004 - 11:57am

Great article Susan!

  Shawna-- Proud Cl for 100 Pounds or More to Go 

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-28-2004
In reply to: lucyfan81
Fri, 03-05-2004 - 12:38pm
One of the reasons portion sizes are so large in America is because the American consumer demands it, and somehow people have gotten the idea that they are "cheated" or "missing out" if the amount of food brought to the table isn't "supersized." And of course, business is in business to make money so the consumer is catered to...but, in order to do that, the business has to fill our plates with a lot of cheap food, and cheap usually means high fat. I've heard repeatedly from news outlets in the past few days, whether on television, the radio, or newspapers locally, that the American consumer wants to hear more about the McDonalds decision....and their decision to obliterate supersize within the year has everybody talking.

So on the one hand, Americans give lip service to the notion of "getting into shape" and "eating wisely" but on the other Americans still want to do it eating too much food. Go figure. If people could get more of the "French mindset" to understand that quality and quantity are NOT necessarily the same thing....then maybe we could all re-set our thinking to demand a little bit of the good stuff, rather than a whole plate full of all-you-can-eat garbage. Now, if that happened we wouldn't be the fattest and unhealthiest nation on earth! But it won't.

So it's up to each of us to make OUR OWN good decisions, and if enough consumers stop eating at all-you-can-eat or huge portion, low quality places....then American restaurants will change. The businessman is only filling a need, a desire on the part of consumers, after all. If those needs change, then business will follow suit. As I said, business is in business to make money, not lose it.