Portion Distortion
Cheeseburgers, fries and soda aren't what they used to be – they're a whole lot more.
Take a typical cheeseburger, which had 333 calories 20 years ago. Today's cheeseburger has 590.
Those fries on the side weighed 2.4 ounces and had 210 calories two decades ago. Today's version is 6.9 ounces and 610 calories.
Then there's the pop – which might have come in a 6.5-ounce bottle 20 years ago with 85 calories. Today's 20-ounce bottle has 250 calories.
Add it all up, and today's burger-fries-pop meal is 1,450 calories, almost double the 728 of 1987. The 2007 version of the meal dishes out more than half the calories a moderately active teen-age boy needs in a day – even before trading up to the really supersized portions.
See More, Eat More
This "portion distortion" isn't limited to restaurants. It has come home, too, reflected everywhere from bigger packages of snacks and other foods to bigger plates in cupboards, says Shelly Frank, RD, LD, clinical dietitian and case manager for HealthWorks! at Cincinnati Children's.
"The bottom line is, if you regularly take in more calories than your body needs, you gain extra weight," Ms. Frank says. "What we see in our clinic is that portions really do contribute to children taking in a lot of extra calories. Research shows that when people are exposed to bigger portions, they tend to eat more."
Awareness of what servings are – or should be – is one key to getting portions back in proportion, she says. Many people aren't aware that many individual-size snacks and other food packages constitute more than one serving.
That 20-ounce bottle of pop, for example, is 2.5 "servings." So while the 100 calories on the nutrition label may not look bad, downing the whole bottle is another story.
"I don't think you can say it's only the parents' fault or the restaurant's fault," she says. "But there's a lack of education about portion sizes. It is important for people to learn how to read labels and to know what an appropriate portion size is. In HealthWorks!, we really encourage people to use smaller plates and bowls, because of the natural tendency to fill them up."
Redefining 'Single' Servings
Because food has been relatively cheap the past two decades, with prices falling relative to other things, it's made economic sense for food marketers to offer bigger portions and packages as a selling tool. The growth of club stores has meant many homes having bigger packages around, too.
"If you're eating out of a large container in front of the TV, you're probably going to eat more," Ms. Frank says. "So if you're buying in bulk, make sure you never eat out of the container." Instead, put a single serving into a small bowl or snack bag.
Rising food prices in the past year may discourage restaurants and packaged-food marketers from making portions yet bigger. But Ms. Frank says parents and children still need to be more aware of what appropriate portions should be.
"There isn't a magic bullet," she says. "But portion control is one piece of a healthy diet."
