Our gigantic problem with portions: why are we all eating too much?
(Guardian UK) f you want to see how inflated our portion sizes have become, don’t go to the supermarket – head to an antique shop. You spot a tiny goblet clearly designed for a doll, only to be told it is a “wine glass”. What look like side plates turn out to be dinner plates. The real side plates resemble saucers.
Back in a modern kitchen, you suddenly notice how vast everything is – 28cm has become a normal diameter for a dinner plate, which in the 1950s would have been 25cm. Just because we are eating off these great expanses of china does not of course mean that we have to serve ourselves bigger portions. But as it happens, we usually do. Brian Wansink is a psychologist (author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think) who has done numerous experiments to prove what you would hope common sense might already tell us: that oversized tableware makes us consume bigger portions. A large ice-cream scoop makes you take more ice-cream; a short, squat glass makes you pour more juice. Because it doesn’t look like much, we still feel we are consuming roughly the same amount. Wansink calls this the size-contrast illusion. The “real danger of these kitchen traps”, writes Wansink, is that “almost every single person in the world believes they’re immune to them”.
In fact, it seems that the only people who are immune to big portions are tiny children. Up until the age of three or four, children have an enviable ability to stop eating when they are full. After that age, this self-regulation of hunger is lost, and sometimes never relearned. This is a cross-cultural phenomenon, from London to Beijing. One study from the US found that when three-year-olds were served small, medium and large portions of macaroni cheese, they always ate roughly the same amount. By contrast, five-year-olds ate a lot more when the portion of macaroni cheese was oversized.
In a world where food is ever-present, many of us have become like Alice in Wonderland, controlled by cakes that say Eat Me and bottles that say Drink Me. As the nutritionist Marion Nestle remarked 10 years ago in her book, What to Eat: “It is human nature to eat when presented with food, and to eat more when presented with more food.” The trouble is that we are pushed more food, more often, every day. In 2013, the British Heart Foundation published a report called Portion Distortion on how portion sizes in Britain have changed since 1993. Back then, the average American-style muffin weighed 85g, whereas 20 years later it was not uncommon to find muffins weighing 130g. Ready meals have also ballooned in size, with chicken pies expanding by 49% and the average shepherd’s pie nearly doubling in size since 1993 (from 210g to 400g). To overeat in such an environment may be less about lacking willpower than being set in your ways. Food psychologists talk about “unit bias” meaning that we are inclined to think that a portion equals one of something, no matter what the size. Even when it’s the 2,000-calorie single slice of pizza that nutritionists managed to buy in New York City: a whole day’s worth of calories in a single snack. ...............(more)
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/25/problem-portions-eating-too-much-food-control-cutting-down
= new reply since forum marked as read
labor costs, packaging, etc all cost more than typical food items.
So, larger packages (try shopping for one sometime), larger portions in restaurants, ad nauseum. True story, typical prices for milk where I'm at: 1 qt = $1.69, 1/2 gallon (2 qt) = $1.89. Twice as much milk for less than a quarter more. I live alone, I can't drink a gallon. 
We are eating ourselves to death, and I'm guilty of it too.
Fact of the matter I am in the habit of eating less. I eat enough to feel almost full. No more.
It became a requirement because of martial arts and my health. As I advanced it became harder to tolerate excess weight. The health reasons was I had a triple bypass recently in my mid forties. Giving me even more reasons.
Weight also made various moves let alone full contact combat that much harder. I had to drop it. I look as it as a way to improve my skills in my discipline.
of course, the food itself is often more calorie dense than it used to be. Just makes it that much easier to over eat.
I think that's most of the benefit of so-called 'clean eating'. It's not so much about any 'superfood' nonsense, it's just that less processed foods tend to be much less calorie dense, and less of a flavor overload. You have to eat a lot more of it, and you're unlikely to snack on it. I mean I don't know anyone who complains that the peas are calling to them when they're watching tv. 
Great job! 
