• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Meals / Food / Snacks: Portion & Serving Size

A

Anonymous

Guest
I totally agree with this guy's campaign against fast food outlets and cinemas.

I gave him my vote! :madeyes:

homepage.ntlworld.com/lemonte/haveitlarge.htm
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020308031440/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lemonte/haveitlarge.htm

Here's the introductory text from the MIA webpage ...

VOTE - WE DON'T WANT IT LARGE!

Le-Monte is starting a very serious campaign - and wants your support!

Are you sick and tired that every time you go for a night out at the cinema or go to a fast food bar, you are hassled by the staff to HAVE IT LARGE......Well, Le-Monte has had ENOUGH!. Please join us in our campaign to stop this harassment!

Yes, every Le-Monte reader can have an exclusive badge to show the world that you agree with our campaign - Wear it with pride!

The badges have been specifically designed to show the people who serve food and sweets in cinemas and fast food outlets what we think - we guarantee that wearing this badge will remove some of life's stresses and help to brighten up your day.

Don't you just hate it when you go into a cinema or any fast food restaurant - you spend 2 minutes eying up the menu, making your mind up, and then ask for your order.......only to hear the VERY PREDICTABLE squeak!....... 'Do you want to make it large for only 20 pence extra'......

As the staff, are always pre-pubescent, it comes out as a squeaky annoying shrill. As you politely say NO to their question, and carry on ordering - they ask you again for the next item on your order....and the next!!!! AGHH! If I wanted large - I would bloody ask for large!

So our new badge can take this stress out of your cinema trips and visits to fast food. ...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
But it's all a con anyway, when you do go large all you get is a few more chips (if it's a meal deal) or more ice in a larger cup but the same amount of drink.

I still have a sneaky fondness for 'Wimpys' where they serve you on china plates and the drinks came in glasses and they never ask you if you want it large.....
 
Fuck, me too.

I used to get in trouble at my bar job for not "upselling" , ie, going "Would you like a double?" every two minutes. My boss used to take me aside and have a word, and I wanted to scream "IF THEY WANTED A DOUBLE THEY'D ASK FOR ONE, YOU SOD, AND BESIDES YOUR PRICES ARE A RIP OFF. YOUR DOUBLES COST A DAY'S WAGES. I WILL NOT FORCE THEM ON PEOPLE WITHOUT DUE WARNING"
Obviously, I never did, but I thought bloody ferocious vibes at him, and hopefully it brought him out in a nasty rash or something.


This probably belongs on the whinge thread, or maybe a whole new thread entitled "irrational neurosis and repressed hatred for the ruling classes"
 
As a previous self-employed trades-person, I was constantly wrangling with my business ethics. That's why I am not rich!
I read widely and was taught marketing and business at college. I thought about using similar practices myself. I wanted to give the best service, I also would like to have 'made a packet', but always seemed to be too 'fair' in my pricing for jobs.

I see 'cowboys' every day in my chosen field, they usually pass me in their brand-new L200 double-cabs, while I'm trying to start the old van!
It seems fairly easy to fleece people out of their money...I felt bloody guilty if I made a large profit!

At what point does it become greed...All I wanted was a van that worked!

:D

...and I know it's not the same as multi-national companies, but the principle is the same, on a more personal level!...You've got to put it into practice at some point!
 
A theater chain near me once went so far as to eliminate the "small" option on their drinks and popcorn altogether. You had medium, or you had large. This backfired on them - those who wanted a small but couldn't get one downsized , and ordered the kiddie combo.

A couple of months later the smalls came back.

Try this: Order a medium. When they ask you if you want a large, say no - on second thought, you want a small. If enough people did this, this annoying practice of upselling would go the way of the great auk.

Nonny
 
Hey Nonny, I like that idea!

Unfortunately, I am one of those people who would probably go for a large without the need prompting. Greediness is my sin. Well, one of my sins anyways. :D
 
You can just imagine how much worse this whole thing is in the States. They don't even ask you if you want a 'large' or a 'double.' No, they have to say something really stupid, and every fast food chain has their own distinct version: "do you want to supersize that?" "would you like to biggie size that for just 79 cents?"
It drives me nuts.
You can hardly get normal portions at any restaurant any more. I can't remember the last time I had a meal out that I didn't have the rest of it for lunch the next day (or lunch and dinner). If I'd wanted to buy two meals, I'd have ordered two! A lot of places actually charge more for the same meal if two people are going to share it.

And we're all too goddamned fat to begin with!
 
We need to make some badges that says "I don't want it large"
 
The ethics of fast food joints are beyond me but I have some experience of
IT sales, where ruthless competition on headline prices has led to the covert
profits on extended warranties, peripherals and add ons.

Customers were not exactly ethical themselves though, demanding demonstrations
from a Value Added Reseller then squeezing the sales-person to match the price
of the mail-order warehouse.

Box-shifting has won the day. The customer is King or Mug, whichever cap fits.

And I'll be arranging my own insurance thank you. :rolleyes:
 
Web design is all so "big", too... kinda upselling your own arse.

Fast food is the work of the devil. They (apparently) put chemicals in to make you feel more full and satisfied, which I would presume is better than just having you buy more food?!? Most odd. Plus, supposedly, there's a little publicised rule at McDonalds...

At McDonalds, if you have to wait more than 5 minutes between ordering and recieving your food, you can get the food AND a refund. I heard this from an ex-employee... you will not see this advertised anywhere and I have yet to have this verified.

Can anybody help here?? Is it all a crock of sh1te?
 
Aging

Funny, but Plato made much the same laments about the passing of quality, about the noise kids call music, and so on.
 
Super Size Jesus!

Portion Sizes In Last Supper Paintings Have Grown Over The Years
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/183245.php
23 Mar 2010

US experts who anaylsed over 50 paintings of the Last Supper have shown that art imitates life in that the portion sizes of the food placed before Jesus Christ and his apostles have grown in the depictions painted over the last 1,000 years.

You can read about the research by Dr Brian Wansink of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and his brother, Dr Craig Wansink, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, Virginia, in the 23 March advanced online issue of the International Journal of Obesity.

Brian Wansink, who is the John S Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, told the press that:

"We took the 52 most famous paintings of the Last Supper (from the book Last Supper, 2000) and analyzed the size of the entrees, bread and plates, relative to the average size of the average head in the painting."

They chose this series of paintings because it probably portrays the most commonly painted meal. The event is Jesus Christ's Last Supper, described in the New Testament of the Bible as taking place during a Passover evening, when according to Saint Paul, Jesus pronounced as he broke the bread: "do this in remembrance of me".

For the study, they used CAD-CAM (a computer-aided design technology) to scan and rotate the paintings so they could measure the food, plates and heads and compare them relative to each other regardless of their orientation in the painting.

They assumed that the average width of the bread is twice the width of the average disciple's head.

The results showed that the relative sizes of the various dishes have increased in a linear fashion over the past millenium, as follows:

* The main dish (entree) has increased by 69 per cent,
* The bread has increased by 23 per cent, and
* The size of the plates has increased by 66 per cent.

Wansink, who wrote a book titled Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, said the findings suggest that the idea of serving bigger portions on bigger plates, which is thought to push people to overeat, has taken place gradually over the last 1,000 years.

"The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," said Wansink.

"We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner," he added.

His brother Craig, who is also an ordained Presbyterian minister, said there is no religious reason why the meals have got bigger. Either meals really did grow or people have become more interested in food, he said according to a report by the BBC.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American portion sizes have been increasing in tandem with waistlines over the last 20 years.

Restaurant meals have got larger, perhaps to make people feel they are getting more value for money, bags of snack foods and soft drinks in vending machines and packages in grocery stores have also increased in size.

The agency points out that portion size is not a problem if people manage what they eat so they don't eat more calories a day than they need. But research shows that when we are confronted with larger portions we tend to eat more in a meal, and we tend not to reduce what we eat subsequent to consuming large portions.

Here are some tips from the CDC to help control portion size and avoid overeating:

* Restaurants often serve portions that are larger than we need, so when eating out, either split the entree with a friend, or ask the waiter to put some of it in a "doggie" bag to take home.
* At home serve meals straight onto the plate and keep excess out of reach to avoid those second and third helpings that are easy to have when food is served in serving dishes.
* When eating or snacking in front of the TV put a reasonable amount in a bowl and put the package out of easy reach (it's easier to overeat when the food is in front of you and you are paying attention to something else).
* Shops generally sell foods in portions larger than we need, so when you get home split the contents of packets into several smaller containers.
* Don't eat straight from the packet: serve a reasonable portion in a bowl or container.
* When buying in bulk, store the excess out of sight, in a place that is not easy to get to, for instance in a basement or garage.
* If you are hungry between meals eat a piece of fruit or salad, and when it is time for the meal try not to overeat.

"The largest Last Supper: depictions of food portions and plate size increased over the millennium."
B Wansink and C S Wansink
International Journal of Obesity, advance online publication 23 March 2010.
DOI:10.1038/ijo.2010.37

Sources: Cornell University, BBC News, CDC Research to Practice Series, No. 2 (May 2006).

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Edit: Fixed title. P_M
 
I find that dinner portions have increased hugely here in Australia.

I'm a big fella, but I rarely manage to finish my meal in a restaurant.

Mind you, what the sizes they serve you here are nothing compared to the US - where they are truly gargantuan.

There is a website called http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/ - people submit pictures of their cooking or restaurant meals. Crazy stuff.
 
I find that dinner portions have increased hugely here in Australia.

I'm a big fella, but I rarely manage to finish my meal in a restaurant.

Mind you, what the sizes they serve you here are nothing compared to the US - where they are truly gargantuan.

There is a website called http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/ - people submit pictures of their cooking or restaurant meals. Crazy stuff.

tumblr_kyyr16NV9g1qzvnxpo1_500.jpg


The Bacon Mug

A giant mug made out of bacon filled with cheddar cheese.
 
The Bacon Mug

A giant mug made out of bacon filled with cheddar cheese.

Gross!

Have to admit though I never had any problem with the portion sizes in Oz!
 
Last Holiday I went to a shopping mall with my boyfriend. Starving, despite the fact that we avoid fast food and junk food, we went to a TGI Fridays. This place is a chain "Pub". Not only are their servings enormous, they list the calories in each menu item. I also swear to you there were TWO items in the whole menu that were prepared without some sort of meat product. I'm not a vegetarian, but do like the choice of having a vegetable only side dish or salad.
 
I'm a chubby chappie myself and I like my food, but there's no way I'd touch any of that food on that website - it's just too much!
I'm fat mostly because of inactivity (i.e. the avoidance of exercise) - not through overeating.
Portion sizes need to be much smaller, especially in America (sorry guys, I'm not attacking you, just stating the obvious). Too much fat, cheese and maple syrup!
 
No offense taken, Mythopoeika. At least not by me.

I swear that 1 restaurant meal in the US is worth 3. You can actually order a to-go box right with your meal, take 2/3rds off your plate for later, and still feel completely satisfied. And that's after choosing the healthiest menu option with no appetizers. It's crazy. (But it saves on cooking.)
 
I'm a decreasing-sized girl married to a larger guy and when we eat out he often moans portions are too small (here in the uk).
We went to the US a couple of years ago and, delerious with jetlag I ordered a side of fries with my meal. They literally came on a foot-long platter...as a SIDE!
When I asked the waiter to take it back as I hadn't ordered it as a main meal his response was "Oh, that's ok, just eat what you want and we'll throw the rest away" :shock:
Having tipped the scales at 17 stone (I'm 5ft 6) once, I've completely changed my attitude to food; my portion sizes are smaller and contain more veg, less bread and dairy and more fish and lean meat. However if I fancy going out at the weekend and eating a bacon mug I will (actually, probably wouldn't but you know what I mean!) but I won't do it every weekend-and certainly not every day! And that's the crucial thing; gargantuan portions should be a one-off, not the norm and that's what many folks-in whatever country they're in-seem to have forgotten. :(
 
When I was in Singapore recently, buying a drink from a freshly-squeezed juice stand, I chose what I wanted and then asked 'how big is medium?' Rather than show me the various sizes of plastic cup stacked up behind her, she pursed her lips, closed her eyes slightly and shook her head at a cocked angle: this is not the size you are looking for. The conspiratorial glint in her eye was quite funny.

She was right in the sense that LARGE was what you'd imagine a regular-sized customer would consider a normal-sized drink for a thirsty man in a hot country, but what why not label that REGULAR?
 
I seriously don't know whether to post this here or in the Whinge thread. But it's not so much a whinge as a WTF, so here goes...

Profiteroles. I bought a pack for my pudding today. Opened it up and there are eight inside, each one about the size of a large marble/small golf ball. Fairly weeny, anyway. And on the packet it says 'serves four.' Four?? Four very small, not very hungry people who are allergic to cream and don't like chocolate, maybe. I've just eaten half the packet and will be eating the other half before bed.

Seriously though - two each? You'd be laughed out of any dinner party...
 
I seriously don't know whether to post this here or in the Whinge thread. But it's not so much a whinge as a WTF, so here goes...

Profiteroles. I bought a pack for my pudding today. Opened it up and there are eight inside, each one about the size of a large marble/small golf ball. Fairly weeny, anyway. And on the packet it says 'serves four.' Four?? Four very small, not very hungry people who are allergic to cream and don't like chocolate, maybe. I've just eaten half the packet and will be eating the other half before bed.

Seriously though - two each? You'd be laughed out of any dinner party...
Learned to make my own. A bit of a faff but not requiring a major skillset. Make as many as you like, with time, add cream as well as dark, white or milk chocolate.
But, yeah - you pay for what you get combines with you pay for someone else to make stuff you could do yourself given the chance. Frankly, going to a dinner party (bring a course rather than a bottle?), I'd make my own. Cheaper and more kudos.
 
I seriously don't know whether to post this here or in the Whinge thread. But it's not so much a whinge as a WTF, so here goes...

Profiteroles. I bought a pack for my pudding today. Opened it up and there are eight inside, each one about the size of a large marble/small golf ball. Fairly weeny, anyway. And on the packet it says 'serves four.' Four?? Four very small, not very hungry people who are allergic to cream and don't like chocolate, maybe. I've just eaten half the packet and will be eating the other half before bed.

Seriously though - two each? You'd be laughed out of any dinner party...

In my experience you can usually divide the number of people that something "serves" by two.
 
Yup.
All ready-meals, divide stated portions by two.
Chinese Takeaways, however, you must double. As in, a "set meal for one" will serve two. A "set meal for two" serves four.
However, me being of a flexible nature when it comes to the interface between taste and finance, a dinner for one or two actually means two meals for one. Breakfast being hot or cold is flexible.

NB: I love cold takeaways.
 
In my experience you can usually divide the number of people that something "serves" by two.
I always think it's so they can make practically anything sound like a health food. 'Only 137 calories per serving'. And then you look at the serving size and think, 'no wonder there's only 137 calories in it, there's hardly anything there!'
 
I always think it's so they can make practically anything sound like a health food. 'Only 137 calories per serving'. And then you look at the serving size and think, 'no wonder there's only 137 calories in it, there's hardly anything there!'

This is how Junk Food Crap becomes "part of a balanced diet."
 
The trick is in portion size.
"Per serving" is not a set figure.
There is a diet company of my acquaintance that allocates points to different foodstuffs. No one knows if this is based on calories, carbs or what.
It was said that mashed or cut bananas had a point but eaten whole didn't "because the stomach absorbed it differently".
Bugger that chewing then, you moron!
And my real 'pointed question' unanswered was tomatoes had a point per portion size. But crushed or blended or tomato juice had none. So WTF was a portion size? I love the stuff but this firm was saying I could drink a gallon of tomato juice each day and it'd not count towards calories?
To be meaningful, portion size is meaningless. It's a short-hand, throwaway phrase by producers for those who can't be arsed.
 
I always think it's so they can make practically anything sound like a health food. 'Only 137 calories per serving'. And then you look at the serving size and think, 'no wonder there's only 137 calories in it, there's hardly anything there!'
You get that with packs of biscuits, with a serving suggestion of 2 biscuits, who the hell only eats 2 biscuits a time?
 
All ready-meals, divide stated portions by two.
Chinese Takeaways, however, you must double.
Aaaah....but where do you stand on a 'Pot Noodle'?

(personally, I never stand on a Pot Noodle)
 
Back
Top