Portion sizes (rant)

[cherinyc]

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!!

On a personal note, I have a younger (not little) sister. She just turned 18, so I have been out of my parents house for most of her life. My parents seem to have grown lackadaisical since my brother and I, because there was no enforcing of "no you can't have another Coke" or "no you can't have a TV/DVD player for your bedroom" or "get off the computer and go do something outside". So in turn, she has had a weight problem since she was 12 (by about 70 pounds now).
The last time we all had dinner, I watched her go through about 7 restaurant lemonades. (I work for a pharmaceutical company that specializes in Diabetes Treatments) Seeing her consume all that sugar just killed me.
My brother and I - for years - tried talking to my parents about this, but their response was that when they tried to say something that she got upset. HELLO??? What's the price of sitting by while your daughter develops type 2 diabetes right in front of your eyes?
Don't get me started on how our society is going to slowly kill itself off.

[chickwhorips]

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?

i think thats just one meal for the day kinda promotion. so you would be saving money in the long run, right?

[Eden]

So I've been sitting here reading this thread and the TV is on. So far in a about 10 mins there have been at least 3 commercials about food - ribs, deep fried chicken nuggets and MickeyD's. Yup we put way too much emphasis on bad food in this country. When was the last time you saw a commerical about tofu?

[emily_in_nc]

I'm not Darcy, but I don't live very far from her. They show that commercial regularly in our area....and...AND...to top it off, they have fried green beans, too!!! (sorry for overdoing the elipses)

Oh yes, that TGIFridays ad is one of the very few restaurant ads that actually inspired me, after first viewing it, to run downstairs and rant to my husband about their three new appetizers. How incredibly artery-clogging and unnecessary are fried mac-n-cheese and fried green beans?! WHO THINKS OF THIS STUFF???

Sick, really sick.

Emily

[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".

[chickwhorips]

how in the world do you fry chocolate? wouldn't it melt?

my stomach got upset just reading about all that stuff being fried.

[xeney]

Ha. This thread is making me hungry.

-- Xeney, who might have once beaten a couple of UCLA football players in an impromptu Dodger-dog eating contest. Only they were drinking beer and I wasn't.

[tattiefritter]

how in the world do you fry chocolate? wouldn't it melt?

:

They cover it in batter first which "protects" the chocolate somewhat. Its still gross though.

[skibum]

Following in the Scottish tradition of frying things, some Americans came up with The Deep Fried Twinkie. Apparently, it's quite popular at state/county fairs. My arteries harden just thinking about it.

[Kitsune06]

It's an interesting study in diet vs. lifestyle.

For awhile, my roommate and I in Eugene would bike *everywhere* (not a car between us) but eat out for virtually every meal. Red Bull and a bagel every morning for breakfast, super-oily quesadillas with chicken, salsa, sour cream and soda, some kind of snack, then chinese or some kind of salad, soup or lasagne for dinner, in relatively large portions. I had a regular checkup with my Dr. (blood tests and the works) and my cholesterol levels were low, my blood pressure on the low end of 'normal' and my 'resting' heart rate around 74 (It's always been a little fast)

Fast forward a few months, when I move and start taking my car everywhere, eating the same stuff, but just driving- sadly never taking my bike to work because I had the car.

I gained 15#, lost all my endurance, and though I don't have any way to 'prove' it, I'm sure my cholesterol/bp went up as my heart started skipping beats again.

I'm back to my pre-move weight and muscle mass, but it really 'laid it out' for me... the traditional bacon 'n eggs, sausage, gravy, biscuits 'n fried tatties came about and were very practical for those getting up and feeding/milking the cows as the sun rose, then having breakfast before heading back into the field to sow/bale/fork/fertilize/harvest. It was a time when people worked HARD and burned enough calories to be thin and wiry despite the huge caloric uptake...

Now, with our sedentary work and home lives, we find ourselves craving the soul-mending foods of our predecessors (come on, what's more soothing than a creamy thai soup with coconut milk and ginger or a morning-after breakfast of biscuits and gravy, with eggs and bacon?) but our lifestyles just can't process it...

I'm a person who will order the biggest entree I can for the lowest price and just take what I need/want and box the rest. I'm with Mimi- if I'm trapped at work, darn straight I'll want a good lunch.

[DarcyInOregon]

I'm a person who will order the biggest entree I can for the lowest price and just take what I need/want and box the rest. I'm with Mimi- if I'm trapped at work, darn straight I'll want a good lunch.

Kit, I think you have the attitude of most people, but the majority of the people who order in restaurants eat it all and they don't bike a zillion miles. That is why you are healthy and they are not, because you have portion control and you are an athlete.

Years ago I gave myself an attitude change about how I select food when I am eating out. Yes, the majority of people order restaurant food so as to maximize calories for the lowest cost. Instead, select food using the criteria of health so as to eat wisely from the food groups, and don't use cost as a consideration unless you are really broke. For example, I like small portions and a variety, so I might make several selections from the apptetizers along with a dinner salad, perhaps a shrimp cocktail, Asian salad rolls, a cup of soup and the dinner salad. That is more than enough for me and I don't have leftovers. I have also gotten very aggressive over the years about the side dishes that may come with a sandwich. French fries are empty calories, so I refuse to eat them. I ask for a salad or soup instead of the fries. If the restaurant can't make the substitution, I leave the fries on the plate untouched.

The original poster mentioned her purchase of asparagus. Here is my contribution regarding asparagus. Cook it in the microwave or steam it. Pour a vinaigrette of your choice over the asparagus and chill overnight. Serve the chilled asparagus on a plate with fresh sliced tomatoes, a portion of fresh cut fruit, and a selection of healthy protein, such as a grilled filet of fish.

Another fantastic way to cook asparagus is to cut it up, add it to low-sodium chicken broth, and add a bit of garlic, a splash of lemon and a bit of olive oil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Using a stick beater, puree the cooked mixture. Serve hot or cold.

Everyone who loves to eat fresh vegetables and fruit should own a stick beater. Right now is when winter squash is in the produce markets, and this year there is an incredible variety. Peel and cut the squash of your choice, and cook in low sodium chicken broth. Add some other items of your choice, like a sweet potato, or an apple or pear, or garlic, or an onion, or nutmeg, and so on. Simmer until done. Get out the stick beater and puree right in the pot. Serve hot. This soup is like the asparagus soup, exceptionally low calorie, and extremely delicious and nutritious.

You can use the stick beater on almost any vegetable or bean. For example, garbanzo beans puree nicely into a soup, or carrots.

By the way, the fried chocolate in Scotland, I think that has to be the most disgusting food choice ever, worse than anything at the burger fast food restaurants in North America. The only thing that comes close is if you get caught in a buffet type of restaurant and you look around you and everyone is eating plates piled high with nothing but fried food, and you are the only one eating from the salad bar. Ever been there? I have.

Darcy