Portion sizes (rant)

[limewave]

Kimm--totally understand. It is frustrating, like its illegal to try and eat healthy. For lunch the other day I had an apple with cheddar cheese slice and some trail mix. It was really good, but my cubicle neighbors made comments about how I was eating like a squirrel. And, when I go to restaurants and I only eat 1/3 or 1/2 of what's on the plate, I always get asked if there was something wrong with it. Yes, it was a TON of food. Of course I don't say that, I always feel like I have to overly compliment the chef to assuage them "really, it was great! Loved it! . . . just not that hungry" I say sheepishly. And I wonder if I get these compliments because I'm not so small and they are surprised I haven't scarfed the plate.

[jobob]

um.... fish is perishable and perhaps he was just hoping to sell more if it? That's his job, after all. Just sayin'.

[Geonz]

"Too bad healthy thinking is so "alternative' around here... Maybe I need to find a nicer alternative for shopping."

[mimitabby]

I buy the bigger cut of fish and then eat the leftovers for lunch.
the same at a restaurant.
they feed me enough for 3 meals, I take it home with me and have 2 lunches out of it.

At work, i am trapped for 8 hours and can't leave. I need a good lunch of leftovers 5 days a week.


I can't stand the portion sizes either, but no one can guilt trip me into eating
more than i want!

[snapdragen]

I find the guys at the meat/fish counter usually think a serving size is anywhere from 10 to 16 ounces of meat. I really caused a problem when I made him cut me tenderloin fillets an inch thick. He couldn't understand why I didn't want the 3" thick, 12 oz each fillets.

[Kimmyt]

True enough. And he was a bigger guy, so maybe he just couldn't fathom getting full off of a little filet of fish.

I mostly filled up on asparagus anyway (mmm leftovers for lunch).

There's something I really just don't enjoy about reheated fish though, so I usually won't take it as a leftover....

[roshelleuop]

I agree about the reheating fish thing and I also hate when people look at you weird for not eating all your food at a restaurant.

Whenever I eat out (which I LOVE to do) I always get my food and ask for a togo box right away. I put 1/2 (sometimes more) in it right away so I only allow myself to actually eat one serving. 99.99% of the time, I am MORE than full after eating the one serving so it works for me! But them I get the question, was everything ok??? I've even had waitresses take my meal off the bill becuase they thought I was trying to be nice and lying about not eating it all

Roshelle from Milwaukee

[DarcyInOregon]

K, you posted about my favorite topic, which is being heart healthy and portion control.

I am not tiny. I am 5'9" and I have about 40-50 pounds of too much body fat. I've been working on my weight loss for many years, and I lost quite a bit of weight already, slowly, over time, with permanent behavior changes. Every day my focus is portion control and choosing my foods carefully, and so I've noticed the same things you have.

Regarding the huge portions in restaurants - it is unbelievable. Not only that, it seems to me that restaurants are looking for ways to make food more fattening. For example, a local restaurant chain added hash browns filled with different cheeses and sour cream to their menu. Menu items that used to have ordinary hash browns, maybe 150 to 300 calories, now have hash browns that are probably around 1500-2500 calories because there are two layers of potatoes, not just the one, and between the layers are gobs of cheese and sour cream. And I look around, and people are eating it!

Then how about sitting down and watching t.v. and up pops the fast food commercials. I refuse to eat at fast food restaurants because they are so unhealthy; indeed I've eaten at fast food restaurants fewer than one dozen times in my life and I am 52. I think the Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial is the worse. The commercial shows the mother bringing home fried chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy, cole slaw and biscuits and putting it down on the dining room table and announcing it is dinner time. What mother in her right mind would feed her family that high-fat, high-sodium, low-nutrition, high-calorie food? Yet Americans see those commericals on t.v. and they think it is how everyone eats, and so children grow up fat. Not only that, young children now have hypertension and high cholesterol, meaning before too much longer they will be diabetics with heart disease. How sad is that?

I can go on and on. This is my favorite topic. But I better shut up before I offend a whole bunch of people.

Darcy

[mimitabby]

K, you posted about my favorite topic, which is being heart healthy and portion control.

Yet Americans see those commericals on t.v. and they think it is how everyone eats, and so children grow up fat. Not only that, young children now have hypertension and high cholesterol, meaning before too much longer they will be diabetics with heart disease. How sad is that?

I can go on and on. This is my favorite topic. But I better shut up before I offend a whole bunch of people.

Darcy

Mine too! I am very concerned about the next generation; kids that don't move around like they should and then eat horrible fatty diets!! I can go on and on. Watch the children trudging home from school (the few whose mothers don't pick them up in their cars) it makes me sick!
then they go home, do homework and watchtv playonthecomputer.

[cherinyc]

For example, a local restaurant chain added hash browns filled with different cheeses and sour cream to their menu. Menu items that used to have ordinary hash browns, maybe 150 to 300 calories, now have hash browns that are probably around 1500-2500 calories because there are two layers of potatoes, not just the one, and between the layers are gobs of cheese and sour cream. And I look around, and people are eating it!
Darcy

I think the same thing about IHOP. I actually like their omelettes (egg-white) and their multi-grain pancakes (though I can barely finish 1, and they give me 3 WITH my huge omelette).
But the big promotion there will be something like "Rolled-battered-stuffed-puffed-caramel...double dipped-stuffed and smothered in whipped cream- French Toast.
What in the world is up with that? How could anyone in their right mind consume something like that for breakfast?

[emily_in_nc]

For lunch the other day I had an apple with cheddar cheese slice and some trail mix. It was really good, but my cubicle neighbors made comments about how I was eating like a squirrel.

They're just feeling guilty about their own eating habits so are trying to make you feel bad about your healthy ones.... When they say stuff like that, just smile inwardly and think about how much healthier you are than them.

Emily

[solveig]

One of my favorite rant topics, too!

What gets me is that people feel comfortable critiquing my food choices or body size as a slim person, where they'd never do that if I was overweight. (And I know this, because I spent most of my life overweight!) At a recent wedding reception, a woman I peripherally know and hadn't seen for a couple years said, "Hi! Good to see you! You're too thin." So I could have responded, "Great to see you too! And you're still too fat." She would've been really offended - and with good reason, because I would've been totally out of line.

This happens all the time - and I usually end up saying something like, "Well, I feel healthy..." or something like that. But it always makes me feel uncomfortable...

We need to give - and seek - acceptance and friendship and respect as PEOPLE, not just bodies or images. And that's easy to lose sight of in this image-conscious society.

Stepping off soapbox...

[tygab]

I find it very disturbing that we modern humans are so disconnected from the food generation process, myself included, though I am attempting to relearn what I can.

We don't know how what we're eating will affect us, we don't know how to eat small portions, we don't know where our food comes from, we don't know what's in it and how it came to be, and we don't know how to pick/prepare healthy food even if such food is available to us.

>>Watching tv, on now, a commercial for a subway sandwich chain where the 'good' sandwich is piled with meat, and the 'bad' sandwich is mocked by supposedly unbiased random people as not having enough meat which surely wouldn't be what they choose. And the commentors are almost all big heavy guys.<<

Here's an interesting portion size analysis from a few years ago:

http://lancaster.unl.edu/food/ftoct02.htm

I feel as though those of us who exercise and pay some attention to what we eat are not only in the minority, we are considered quite odd by those who do not!

an estimated 17 percent of children and adolescents ages 2-19 years are overweight

from the CDC health stats page.

This from CNN back in Sept:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/09/06....ap/index.html

Fernstrom, who was not involved in the study, said as portions have gotten larger, it has been harder for people to estimate what a standard portion should be. The amount people should eat seems puny compared to the mounds of food we have become used to seeing on our plates, she said.

"This is showing human foibles. It's hard to estimate food. And it's really hard to estimate huge portions," Fernstrom said.

Fernstrom suggests people eat smaller portions, use a smaller plate so the meal looks larger, and downsize -- not super-size --meals when they eat out.

I know, I'm talking to the wrong audience here... but this is a problem!

[DarcyInOregon]

And what is with all of the fried chicken products being created and produced in the last few years? I don't get it. The food producers are taking chicken, which is quite healthy when it is grilled, baked or broiled, and creating dozens of new ways to make it unhealthy, invovling changing the shape, coating it, frying it, saucing it, and so on. Go to a restaurant and look at the entree salads, and the chicken on the salads are all coated and deep fat fried. It isn't just that portions are getting bigger, but the food producers are actively trying to put more unhealthy calories into the food by creating new ways to add fat and salt to regular food, and then we see the resulting commercials on television.

Yes, that sandwich commercial is the worse, the one with the meat piled up. A portion size in a sandwich is 1-3 ounces, depending on what else is in the sandwich, not piled up inches thick.

The original poster mentioned the show "The Biggest Loser." I like that show because it shows how the overweight people got heavy, mostly for some of the reasons discussed in this thread, and I think it is important for people to understand how they got overweight. A person can't lose weight permanently until they understand how and why their body got big and make the permanent life-time behavior changes that will allow them to successfully lose the excess pounds. As the participants on the show are taught basic nutrition and exercise, so do the viewers in the television audience learn nutrition and exercise, and that is a good thing. I think the show is positive and affirming, and hopefully gives hope to many people to learn proper heart healthy nutrition and exercise behaviors.

One thing that many people don't know as they flounder around trying to learn about nutrition is that almost every hospital in North America has a three-month program teaching heart healthy nutrition to anybody who signs up for the class. A person's health insurance will pay for the fees if the doctor says it is ok, like if a person has hypertension, or insulin insensitivity, or is overweight, or if there is a dependant person in the household with similar problams. If not, pay the fees and go through the course anyway. These classes are not diet programs, but instead are designed to teach people how to be healthy with their nutrition and exercise, and how to recognize that measuring their cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar can be even more important indicators of their overall health than their weight.

If a person eats and exercises so as to keep their cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar as healthy as possible, then eventually a lot of the excess body fat will burn off until the body reaches a fat/muscle/bone density ratio that is appropriate for that person's sex, age and activity level. So what if the time line is years, and not months. It is better than dying decades early because your body is clogged with cholesterol. For the record, I had two friends die in the last year because their bodies were so clogged with cholesterol the doctors couldn't even do a bypass surgery. Both individuals had a total cholesterol of around 220, and were not even on a statin drug. When I told them repeatedly that their cholesterol was too high, they said oh no, that 220 was a good number. Huh? And now they are dead.

Darcy

[tattiefritter]

I used to think it was just the Scots that has a penchant for deep frying everything! Growing up in Scotland it was normal to me to get lots of deep fried foods at the chippy (only occasionally though), when I moved to England I realised that perhaps it wasn't quite normal at all. My user name is actually a battered deep fried thing I used to eat as a teenager but can't stomach now (you can take the girl out of Scotland but you can't take Scotland out of the girl!)

Good (??) examples of artery clogging crap available from any Scottish chippy all battered and deep fried: sausages, haggis (naturally), black pudding, hamburgers, chicken, pies and pizza (I kid you not). Nothing is as bad as the deep fried Mars bar (I think they are called Milky Way in the States) or other chocolate bars. Add to that the proliferation of McDonalds etc. Food portions aren't quite up to American sizes yet but they are heading that way.

I did my degree in Glasgow and would regularly see school kids popping into the chippy at lunchtime and picking a chocolate bar off the shelf and asking the guy behind the counter to put it in the fryer for them It could be anything (I once saw a girl ask for a Creme egg to be fried - yuck), sometimes two of them would go halfs on a double finger bar like a twix and then spend the rest of their lunch money on cigarettes (another problem Scotland has - yay for the smoking ban ).

Don't get me wrong, I love Scotland, its a beautiful place but it deserves its title as the "Sick man of Europe".