Food Portions

As a nation, we have made many life style changes in the past 2 decades. We are much more aware of reading labels and knowing about fat, salt, and sugar content. Do you remember when there was no such thing as a "diet" drink or synthetic sweeteners? New meaning has been added to words like diet, lite, natural and low fat. In many ways we are much more aware of what is in the food we eat and where the food came from.

What may be less known to us is how portion size has increased over the years. There has been a gradual increase in serving size over the past 20 years. The advent of the "all you can eat" salad bar changed eating out for many. Unfortunately, the "all you can eat" salad bar started growing by adding other items that were high in fat and calories. The "all you can eat" salad bar grew into "all you can eat" buffets. Restaurants made up for the larger amount of food by requiring fewer employees and having greater volume of customers.

Other words and meanings have been added to our lexicon pertaining to food: king-size this, super-size that, Biggie^TM, Quarter-pounder^TM, etc. are part of our daily life. A nutritionally appropriate amount of meat or fish is in the range of 3 to 5 ounces. Yet, there are steak restaurants that will offer meat in the 16 to 32 ounce ranges. Here are some concepts to consider before deciding what size food item you want to consume:

• One small chocolate chip cookie (50 calories) is equivalent to walking briskly for 10 minutes.
• The difference between a large gourmet chocolate chip cookie and a small chocolate chip cookie could be about 40 minutes of raking leaves (200 calories).
• One hour of walking at a moderate pace (20 min/mile) uses about the same amount of energy that is in one jelly filled doughnut (300 calories).
• A fast food "meal" containing a double patty cheeseburger, extra-large fries and a 24 oz. soft drink is equal to running 2½ hours at a 10 min/mile pace (1500 calories).

The National Institute of Health has a great activity on portion sizes and how they have changed over the years. Use this link http://hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/portion/  todo this fun and thought-provoking activity.