Posted on: Sunday, March 10, 2002
Super-size foods reach ridiculous levels
By Nanci Hellmich
USA Today
Now, one new study shows that portions are getting bigger, and another indicates that big portions contribute significantly to overeating — and therefore the overweight problem in the United States.
In a study at Pennsylvania State University, researchers gave 51 college students four different-sized servings of macaroni and cheese — the smallest was two cups and the largest was five cups. The participants in the study came to the laboratory several times and were fed different serving sizes each time. They were told they could eat as much or little as they wanted.
Researchers found:
Men ate on average 1.9 cups when served the two-cup portion, but they ate two cups when they were served the five-cup portion.
Women ate on average 1.4 cups when served the two-cup portion, but they ate 13/4 cups when served the five-cup portion. After the meals, participants rated their fullness the same, regardless of how much they had eaten.
About half the participants didn't notice that the size of portions were different from meal to meal.
Barbara Rolls, professor of nutrition at Penn State, believes that people are being subtly driven to eat more by the size of the portions.
Sometimes when people are dining out, they also are consuming alcohol and socializing, so expecting them to pay attention to portion size is unrealistic, she says. "Relying on people's will to resist the huge portions at restaurants isn't going to work."
In another study, Lisa Young, an adjunct assistant professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University, weighed and analyzed servings of commonly eaten foods from restaurant chains and name-brand items in delis. She found that many of them far exceed the standard serving from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Food Guide Pyramid and from the Food and Drug Administration for food labels.
She also compared servings today with those in the past. Among her findings, published in the February issue of the American Journal of Public Health:
Several restaurants served about three cups of pasta for an entree, which would rack up about 600 calories, and that's without the sauce, she says. One cup of pasta is considered a serving and tallies about 200 calories.
A large cookie from a typical deli weighed about four ounces, which could add up to 400 to 500 calories, depending on the type of cookie. A medium cookie should weigh about half an ounce, according to the USDA. That would be about 60 calories, depending on the type, Young says.
A typical muffin was six ounces, but some weighed as much as 11 ounces; a medium muffin is one ounce, according to the government.
7-Eleven has a 64-ounce soda that could contain 800 calories, an amount 10 times the size of the former small bottles of Coca-Cola, she says.
Even at Starbucks, if you want a small coffee, you have to order the "tall," which is 12 ounces, Young says. "That epitomizes what is going on in America when the tall is considered a small," she says. "They don't want to use the word 'small.' It's taboo."
Portion sizes have increased considerably since the 1970s, Young says, and she is convinced that the increase in overweight and obesity in this country parallels the increase in portion sizes.
"The sizes aren't even normal anymore. They are ridiculous."
Edith Howard Hogan of the American Dietetic Association says many people have portion distortion. "We have to teach people what a portion is. You have to look at your food with new eyes."
Consumers today easily can buy cookies the size of pancakes, sodas big enough to drown in and plates of pasta that never seem to end.
