Portion Size at Restaurants
The size of the meals served at many restaurants is simply outrageous. During the past week, we ate out three times – twice at Italian restaurants and once at an American bistro restaurant. (We’ll blame some of the gluttony on visits with relatives….)
At one of the Italian restaurants, we were given portions that were more than large enough to feed two people. Had we known, we would have ordered to small salads and one entrée – and we still could have left the restaurant full. Last night, at the bistro, one of our entrees contained half a chicken! Simply ridiculous.
Recently, there was a study published saying that people felt as full when served a smaller portion than a larger portion. The study has a point. The brain, seeing an empty plate, thinks hunger has been satisfied. Conversely, if food remains on the plate, people will naturally keep eating.
posted by Netsweat.com @ 8/07/2006
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2 Comments:
I agree, restaurant portions have become absolutely ridiculous. There was a National Geographic article several months ago (maybe a year I'm not sure) about fat. They compared serving sizes from a couple decades ago to current serving sizes. It's amazing how much everything has grown. No wonder the average size of people have grown in the last few decades too.
I've also read that one way to keep from eating too much is to use small dark plates. People usually feel the need to fill up their plates whether they can eat all the food or not and people put more food on white plates than darker plates. I'm not sure if that's true. Have you ever heard that?
I have not heard of using dark plates to limit portion size, but there might be something to it.
I'd be real curious to know if having the plate color match the food makes a difference (e.g. putting marina sauce on a red plate). I could totally barking up a tree on this one, but it might be worth looking to.
-Charles
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