Plumped up portions: over the years, the serving sizes of food have expanded--and so have people's waistlines.

TitleAnnotation: / LIFE: NUTRITION
Author: / Crane, Cody
GeographicCode: / 1USA
Date: / Nov 9, 2009
Words: / 1860
Publication: / Science World
ISSN: / 1041-1410

The Hershey Company introduced its first milk-chocolate bar in 1900. The sweet confection weighed in at 16 grams (0.6 ounces)--the same as just two of their miniature Hershey's bars today. Compared with the original, a standard-size Hershey's bar nowadays is about two and a half times larger.

Candy bars aren't the only foods to have grown over the years. Portions of everything from burgers to fries, and colas to cookies have also swelled. "Portion sizes for foods across the board have gotten two to five times larger," says Lisa Young, a professor of nutrition at New York University. Combine that with an abundance of cheap, sugar-loaded, fat-filled foods. The result: People are ingesting more calories than ever before.

Americans today consume hundreds more calories per day than they did only a generation or two ago. At the same time, most people haven't increased their daily activity to burn off that extra energy. An addition of even a hundred more calories per day to a person's diet would equal a weight gain of 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds) over the course of a year. No wonder the United States is facing a growing obesity problem, say experts.

UNHEALTHY RECIPE It's not just adults who are getting heftier. Nearly one out of every three kids in the U.S. is overweight. That's a troubling statistic, says Young: Packing on the pounds increases the risk for grown-up diseases. As the number of heavier children goes up, so does the number of kids with diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and sleeping troubles. "We don't even know yet what health problems being overweight now will cause later in life," says Young.

Scientists are realizing that the amount we eat, not just the types of foods we consume, plays a major role in why people become overweight. Although eating healthy is part of the solution, "People do a better job of watching what they eat than how much they eat," says Young.

When it comes to eating less, knowing when to say when isn't always so simple. Brian Wansink is the director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University in New York. He studies consumers' behavior when it comes to food. In one of his experiments, Wansink rigged up self-refilling soup bowls at a restaurant. He wanted to see whether people would rely on internal cues like fullness or external ones like the amount of soup left in the bowl to decide when to stop eating. Those given "bottomless" soup bowls ended up eating 73 percent more than those given regular bowls of soup. And the all-you-can-eat group estimated--wrongly--that they had consumed about as many calories as those with regular bowls. Wansink's conclusion: "People tend to eat with their eyes, not their stomachs."

PORTION DISTORTION Even though it's more food than we need, the jumbo products marketed by restaurants and supermarkets to attract customers are hard to pass up. That supersize order of french fries or family-size bag of chips may seem like a bargain, but it comes with a high-calorie price tag. For example, 7-Eleven convenience stores sell a 2 liter (64 oz.) soda-fountain cup called the Double Gulp that holds about 800 calories worth of cola. That's more than a third of the average person's recommended daily 2,000-calorie allowance. "Gulp!"

Fast-food drive-throughs and grocery-store aisles aren't the only places where portions have gotten bigger. Hetpings of food cooked at home have grown as well. Young and Wansink have both taken stock of recipes in the popular cookbook The Joy of Cooking, which has been in print since the 1930s. They found that portions for the same recipes have become larger in newer editions. A recipe for brownies that once made 30 servings now serves only 16. Glasses, bowls, and plates have steadily increased in size too, allowing people to dole out bigger beverages and more food.

Wansink has found that being served larger portions actually increases people's appetites. He studied this by inviting test subjects to watch a movie and offering them a free snack. There was one hitch: The snack was a medium or large bucket of 14-day-old popcorn. Not only did people eat the treat even though it was stale, those given larger containers munched much more.

HOW TO EAT WELL How do you decide what is reasonable to eat when restaurants and grocery stores make it so difficult? Most people don't have a handy way to estimate how large a serving of steak, spaghetti, or chips they should be eating. Instead they assume the amount in a package or the amount they are served is the right quantity for them. But experts have a few tips to help you choose sensibly sized portions.

At the supermarket, read packages' labels, which indicate how much of the product equals one serving. Some smaller packages, like snack-size bags of chips, may look like a single serving but actually contain a lot more. If product packaging isn't at hand, use comparisons to help gauge correct portion sizes. For example, a cup of cereal should be about the size of a baseball, a baked potato about the size of a computer mouse, and a steak about the size of a deck of cards. (For more examples, be sure to check out www.scholastic.com/scienceworld.)

When dining at home, try switching to slightly smaller dinnerware. "Three ounces of spaghetti on a 10-inch plate looks like a good amount, but on a 12-inch plate it looks like an appetizer," says Wansink. No matter what the plate size, follow this rule to make sure your portions add up to a balanced meal: Fill half of your plate with vegetables, a fourth with whole grains, and a fourth with lean protein.

Ultimately, the right portion size should be measured by how full you are and not by the amount of food in front of you, says Young. That will allow you to push back from the table when you feel satisfied instead of when your plate is clean.

NOW BURGER TODAY

590 calories

THEN BURGER 20 YEARS AGO

330 calories

NOW BUCKET OF POPCORN TODAY

630 calories

THEN BUCKET OF POPCORN 20 YEARS AGO

270 calories

THEN SERVING OF FRIES 20 YEARS AGO

210 calories

NOW SERVING OF FRIES TODAY

610 calories

THEN TURKEY SANDWICH 20 YRS AGO

320 calories

NOW TURKEY SANDWICH TODAY

820 calories

THEN 6.5-OUNCE COLA 20 YEARS AGO

85 calories

NOW 20-OUNCE COLA TODAY

250 calories

DID YOU KNOW?

* The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines standard serving sizes for dietary guidance, while the Food and Drug Administration defines standard servings for food labels.

CRITICAL THINKING:

* Why do you think that portion sizes are growing? What are some strategies to monitor your portion sizes?