Portion Distortion
Over the last 20 years, portion sizes have expanded…and Americans have expanded right along with them. What’s the peril in larger portions? A number of studies have now shown that – when people have more food in front of them – they eat more…without feeling fuller either. As noted in this publication by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC):
A study by Rolls et al. tested how adults responded to meals on different days of four different portion sizes of macaroni and cheese. They found that the bigger the portion, the more participants ate. Participants consumed 30% more energy (162 cal) when offered the largest portion (1000g) compared to the smallest portion (500g). They also reported similar ratings of hunger and fullness after each meal despite the intake differences. After the study, only 45% of the subjects reported noticing that there were differences in the size of the portions served.
A cup of coffee has 0 calories. Even with creamer and a couple teaspoons of sugar, it’s under 75 calories. But a “Vente” (20 oz.) ”Caramel Macchiato” from Starbucks will cost you 300 calories!
Eating even just a few hundred extra calories on a daily basis can make a big difference over time…especially since people become less – rather than more – active as the years go by. The “Portion Distortion” quiz* developed by the National Institutes of Health offers some insights on this. For example, 20 years ago, an average bagel was 3 inches in diameter, and provided roughly 140 calories. One of today’s large 6 inch bagels, however, provides 350 calories. In the quiz example, it would take 50 minutes of moderate activity (raking leaves, in this case) to compensate for the extra 210 calories. That’s a lot of extra work for a few extra bites.
Over on the “Bodybuilding Revealed” and “Fat Loss Revealed” forums, we encourage our members to buy a kitchen scale and extra measuring cups so they can weigh/measure the food they eat. Databases like the one over at calorieking.com are scalable, which makes it easy to discover the calories in any weight/volume of food. It’s a real eye-opener. My husband was the perfect example…6 years ago, he was struggling to lose some excess fat, but always brushed off my suggestion that he measure his food and keep track of his calories…”too compulsive” he said. But one day, he agreed to try it – just to show me. He was aiming for 2000 calories, and was chagrined to discover he’d consumed his entire daily allowance by 2:00 in the afternoon.
That was all it took – he was sold from that day forward. To date, he’s lost 50 pounds…and kept it off.
I’ll be the first to admit it: it’s awkward at first, but after a week or two, it goes pretty smoothly. And the payoff is that it teaches you to “eyeball” food portions and estimate calories when you’re eating away from home.
*h/t to Divine Caroline
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Sarah on 25 Jun 2008 at 1:41 pm #
I had the little paper back book from CalorieKing … it’s in the garbage! And I don’t use their web site, not the ones from FitDay or other on-line listings of foods. Why?
Because they list such huge amounts of “stuff” I never eat, that the simple, raw ingredient at the base of the dish, the one thing I was in fact looking for, is drowned in the listing.
Look for a simple, raw, skinless chicken breast. Try to find it steam cooked. Good luck scrolling through the deep fried, KFC-meals, and other preparations of chicken.
Looking for a tomato? First listed is ketchup! Then tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, canned … and lost somewhere in there “tomato, raw”.
The day these listings are started with the original product and then the derivatives, I’ll try them again; not before.
Sorry, just a quick rant there
Portion size is especially a problem on the northern continent at the west side of the Atlantic (USA/Canada) much more so than in the “old countries” (Europe). Having lived on both sides of the ocean, and not just visited as a tourist, I have seen this first-hand.
I read the other day, someone from the States had been to France and understood why the French weren’t fat like the Americans … according to him, they were in a constant state of hunger from the small portions they ate. I had to laugh!
The portion sizes in France are plenty substantial enough to satisfy anyone’s apetite and hunger and keep their metabolism going. What they are not huge enough to do, is pack on excess fat from excess amounts of food (i.e. calories).
Having lived in France for 14 years, I was certainly never hungry after any meal
and being in charge of the cooking at hime now that I live in Canada, I stick to “tiny, European portion sizes” which provide plenty of nutrients and calories for all.
Going to restaurants (rarely, because of price and content – salt, MSG, God-knows-whats added) I always divide the food up in half, and eat one half only. Even that is slightly more than I would have made at home!
Recently, I heard that restaurants were going to reduce portion sizes due to the rising cost of food, so that the price per meal would stay the same. I think they can lower the price at the same time, because they’ll save on “doggie-bags” for leftovers!
Elissa on 25 Jun 2008 at 3:26 pm #
LOL – calorieking.com is set up just like any other large database: Google is a great example. The more key words you use, the more specific your search results will be. For example, if you type “raw tomato” into the search engine at Calorie King, lo and behold: the first listing is “Vegetables, Fresh: Tomato, red, ripe, raw, edible portion.”
Ditto, “chicken breast, skinless” – took me straight to “Chicken: Roasted, Breasts, Boneless, Skinless, cooked”
In other words, you can’t expect a computer database to read your mind. But it’s “intelligent” enough to give you what you need, if you tell it what you want. Just like any other tool, you have to learn to use it properly.
The fact that they have such a large list is great, IMHO. Sure, there’s a lot of stuff there that I certainly don’t eat either, but other people do – so having those listings there is useful.
It’s a lot like a library or bookstore: the presence of a whole lot of books that I’m never going to read isn’t going to stop me from finding and checking out/buying the ones I want…and the last thing I want is for the librarian or store manager to stock only the books that he or she has decided – in advance – are the ones that are “good for me.”