By Eve Persak
Student Dietetic Association
“I’ll have a non-fat latte with soymilk in the venti cup.”
“Can I have a large Carbolite frozen yogurt with extra strawberries and blueberries?”
“Hey, grab a Superbag of those Baked Low-Sodium tortilla chips for the barbeque, will you?”
In an effort to promote health and manage weight, individuals today will elect to eliminate entire food groups from their diet, minimize salt and sugar intake, believe whole-heartedly that even the smell of a french fry will clog their arteries, and purchase only foods of the low-fat, fat-free and organic variety.
Prescriptions in the latest fitness magazines or diet books and rules mandated by the latest “nutrition experts” are readily accepted as gospel truth. Isn’t it ironic, though, that while people are quick to educate themselves in the quality of each of their meals, few stop to consider the quantity of these foods they eat on a daily basis?
What exactly is a “serving?” While we see this word everyday and toss it around quite casually, few are aware of what it actually means and how it can be applied to our food choices each day.
Unfortunately, to the detriment of the general public, there is a huge discrepancy between the food options offered at restaurants and grocery stores and the standard portion sizes determined by federal health organizations.
Dinner plates are overflowing, chip and cookie bags are becoming progressively larger, and researchers have observed that unknowing consumers are eating from 25 percent to more than eight times the amount of what would constitute a “normal” meal or snack in each sitting.
Experts attribute many of our nation’s problems with wide-spread obesity and chronic disease to this skewed portion perspective.
To counteract the recent phenomenon of expanding portion sizes and waistlines, the American Dietetics Association offers examples of the physical appearance of a single serving of various foods. Here are just a few:
Three ounces of fish, poultry or meat can be compared to a deck of cards, a check book, or a cassette tape.
A one cup serving of pasta is the size of a tennis ball.
A 2 tablespoon serving of peanut butter is the size of a golf ball or ping pong ball.
One bagel is the size of a hockey puck.
A half-cup serving of cooked or raw vegetables is the size of a light bulb.
A one-ounce serving of cheese about three dominoes.
A teaspoon of margarine or butter about the same size as the distance from the tip of the thumb to the first joint, or one dice.
A medium potato should be the size of a computer mouse.
A cup of lettuce is four leaves.
A serving of pretzels or chips is about the size of one large handful.
A cup or medium sized piece of fruit is the size of a baseball.
Taken at face value, some of these comparisons seem shocking. When was the last time you cut yourself off after only a handful of tortilla chips or a deck of cards worth of your mom’s homemade chicken? What’s important is that these are merely guidelines to gauge how much we eat in the overall framework of a day.
One needn’t carry a dice around to measure their butter before smearing it on their hockey-puck sized bagel. It is not “wrong” for an individual to eat two cups (two servings) of pasta, because that meal will contribute to the 6 to 11 servings of grains recommended for each day.
Problems arise when persons become accustomed to consuming a foot-long submarine sandwich (the equivalent of 6 servings of grains) for lunch alone, without even factoring breakfast or dinner into the equation.
Slowing down when you eat, evaluating how hungry you are throughout your meal, staying mindful of the sizes of standard portions of food servings, offering to split a meal with a friend when you know you’ll receive a huge portion, and asking for a to-go box for whatever you can’t finish are simple strategies that can help to avoid unnecessarily overeating.
Our food choices are our responsibility. If we could match our attentiveness to the types of foods we consume with our consciousness of how much we consume, we would halt the super-sizing of our meals and instead super-size the health gains that we achieve personally and nationwide.
October 02, 2003