This shows you how everyday foods have gradually been upsized over the past ten years and why this is such a problem. I firmly believe that big portion sizes are a real contributor to passive weight gain and the obesity crisis. Here you can make up your own mind (I think you'll agree).
Nutritionists come to realise that - in modern Western countries - we live in what we call an “obesogenic” world - full of fast food outlets, food courts, vending machines, snack food and meal deals. It’s a world that’s designed to create obesity thanks to junk food that is cheap, kilojoule or calorie dense, widely available and sold in large portions. The obesogenic world overrides our best efforts at maintaining a healthy weight.
Let’s compare the portion size of 4 everyday foods and you’ll see what I mean:
Any of you who saw the movie “Supersize Me” will remember how it highlighted the worst of fast food and it’s deliberate ploys to upsize your order.
Its director Morgan Spurlock lives on Maccas for 30 days and does his best to eat everything they supersize him to.
Fast food outlets are masters at upsizing you for little extra. I bet you’ve already encountered these examples:
Food companies and supermarkets are good at giving you more food for free. I bet you've often seen: "Get two for the price of one", "Get 250 mL extra free", "1.2 for the price of 1 kg". It’s a bargain we can’t resist.
Research has tracked these expanding portion sizes. It shows how 10 foods grew in size in the US between 1991 and 1996. What catches my eye is that it’s beverages that have increased the most. Particularly beer, soft drink and fruit drink.
Researchers in the US have also shown that serve sizes have increased dramatically since the time when they were first introduced. Look at well-known brands with the year the product was first introduced, it’s original size, and the sizes available now. McDonald’s fries is a typical example. In 1955, McDonald’s first introduced it’s iconic paper bag of fries which weighed 70 g. Now this is the smallest of four sizes, which go up to 120 g for a medium size bag, 170 g for a large cup, and 207 g for a king-sized cup! The same applies to McDonald’s burgers, Budweiser beer and Hershey's bars.
Movie popcorn is a real trap. The bigger the box you buy, the more you tend to eat. And that has been shown in experiments. I surveyed the popcorn at a large cinema movie chain. Here you can compare the three sizes they sell, the maxi, the mega, and the super-mega for their weight, fat, kilojoules and cost. If we compare the super-mega to the maxi, you’ll see that for $2 more you get double the weight, double the fat and kilojoules.
In a well-known movie popcorn experiment, two groups of students were offered a box of popcorn – one was a normal maxi size. The other was the super-mega at double the size. What this showed is that people eat approximately 50% more from the big bucket than from the small bucket.
The bottom line is, the bigger the size of food presented to you, the more you eat.
The experiment was then repeated by asking to watch a movie with a bag of M&Ms. Half the students were given a medium bag which contained 100 M&Ms. The other half got a large bag which contained 206 M&Ms.
The size of the pack increases how much you consume. The students thought they were being asked to watch a movie, they didn’t realise they were being secretly observed for how much they consumed. The graph shows that the students with the small bag of 100 ate 63 M&Ms. The students with the large pack ate almost double – 112 M&Ms. They both had the same feelings of hunger and fullness at the start of the experiment. His excellent book, Mindless Eating, reviews all these experiments and shows clearly we tend to eat the portion served infront of us.
The fashion to large dinner plates only encourages larger portions. Line up two plates. Ask yourself, “Which steak looks bigger?” The one on the big plate? Or the one on the smaller plate?
Of course, both steaks are the same size. The one on the big plate appears smaller, so you think you are eating less.
The solution is to try and eat small. For instance, serve up small portions - which we’d call normal in a world of big plates and big portions.
Remember, WASTE has two meanings – if it doesn’t go to food waste it will end up around your waist.