Saw this on the NIH website. Their “We Can” program is trying to do something about the American obesity rate. Portion size is out of control in the US, is it like that everywhere else?
1200 Calorie Vegan 1200 Calorie Vegan Diet 1200 Calorie Vegan Meal Plan 1200 Calorie Vegetarian 1200 Calorie Vegetarian Diet 1200 Calorie Vegetarian Meal Plan Vegan Vegan 1200 Calorie Vegan 1200 Calorie Diet Vegan 1200 Calorie Meal Plan Vegan 1200 Kcals Vegan 1200 Kcals a day Vegan 1200 Kcals per day Vegan 1200 Kilocalorie Vegan 1200 Kilocalorie a day Vegan 1200 Kilocalorie per day vegan1200isplenty Vegetarian
25 Comments
Maybe 20 years from now bagels will be 12 inches wide and 700 cals, lol. Someone (another American) once asked me “Why are Americans so fat?” and I didn’t have an answer, but maybe the portion size escalation has something to do with it.
It seems to be a regional issue as well. I’m originally from Oklahoma and when I fly from the Austin airport to the Tulsa airport it’s interesting to see average body size change . My family in OK is quite overweight but elsewhere my relatives aren’t. Maybe peer pressure is another factor.
From a personal European point of view, I think it’s multifactorial but yes, American portion sizes are out of control. Two examples: fast food ‘regular’ sizes are frequently bigger in US + pics on r/food or other food related subreddits usually depict very large portions (recent example was a pic of lasagna from an American restaurant, everyone seemed in love with the food but I just felt disgusted by the amount).
Born and raised in CA, I had a very hard time as a child finishing my food. My parents would have me sit at the table until I was done, even after everyone else got up. I dreaded going to restaurants because I knew I’d have to eat past the point of feeling sick. I’m in my late 20s now and worked through a lot of that and am much better about stopping when I’m near full/comfortable but it took a long time. I still catch myself forcing myself to try and finish food when someone else has paid for it but the people around me know I’ve been working on it and will remind me I don’t have to finish it if I don’t want to. I hate the portions in America (though I’ve never been anywhere outside the US yet) and will often try and get food from kids or senior menus when the restaurant allows it. Otherwise I try to stick to appetizers and sides to create a smaller meal myself.
We have bagel thins, 100 calorie mini bagels, 100 calorie organic whole grain English muffins. There are exorbitant options, don’t get me wrong, but there are more options than ever.
I may be projecting here, but I think our struggle with obesity is actually a struggle with spiritual growth, acceptance, boundaries, compassion, and healthy interconnectedness.
In other words, I think we are addicts. And just like any addict, we tend to swing wildly from strict sobriety to casual over-indulgence. But the answer is to let the hole be filled with what belongs.
When I was in the middle of a binging episode, the serving size didn’t matter. The bagel size didn’t mean anything, because there was another 120 calorie bagel within reach; if we make smaller bagels, people who want more will simply have more. The serving size seems to be more of a symptom, to me.
What mattered in my life, was the ability to feel satisfied; developing the ability to differentiate between physical and emotional hunger, and learning how to feed emotional hunger.
It’s not just the portion sizes, it’s the extremely calorically dense ingredients.
If more restaurants had volume eating style dishes that could heavily combat the obesity epidemic. Why not offer Stevia versions? Swap some of the flour for insoluble oat fiber?
All of the diet hacks we use could very easily be adapted to radically reduce the calories in foods people are used to just grabbing out of convenience.
The average bagels was not 3 inches in diameter in 2001
I am in Canada, where we have similar foods to the US but your portion sizes are absolutely ridiculous. I went to ihop in California once and ordered a hot chocolate and the mug was like, a soup bowl. And we have the same breakfasts here at our ihops, but our pancakes aren’t literally dinner plate sizes. We went to McDonalds and my ex got a supersize meal just to see and it was nuts, like who could ever eat that much? Our supersize meals were the same as the American mediums maybe? It’s crazy how much difference there is. We also don’t put HFCS in absolutely everything… why is bread so sweet there?
I got a bagel from a local bagel shop recently and weighed it, and it ended up being over 500 calories!
I’ve lived in Canada most of my life. Whenever we’d visit relatives in the states and went out to a restaurant (regular or fast food) I was always blown away by how massive the food portions are. That’s not to say Canadian portions are small, just not nearly as large as American portions. It’s ridiculous.
Definitely not like that in other countries. When I lived in the states I gained a bunch of weight because I was less active and ate so much more. As soon as I moved back to Europe and was back to walking around everywhere and eating the normal food here I lost it all. I found everything in the states to be too sweet, it honestly seemed like everything was loaded with sugar. When I tried to eat in America like I do here, I found it was so difficult because fresh ingredients were so expensive and the processed foods were so full of junk. It was a lose lose. I don’t want to live in a place that actively makes it more difficult for me to be healthy.
It’s not just portion sizes causing the problem it’s the processed calorie dense food. Nobody gets fat off of huge portions of broccoli or apples, but they do get fat off of all the fake food Americans consume
my asshole, before and after getting fucked by the US government
This is why I avoid bread and bagels. Too many calories for too little food. Whole, intact grains please 🤚
I’m from Mexico and went to private school where it was common for the kids to go to an exchange program for a year in middle school/high school to practice english. Whenever someone went to Europe, they came back looking fairly similar but whenever the kids went to the U.S, they all came back with 30 extra lbs in average.
When I moved to the U.S, it was really shocking to me seeing the size of the meals at a restaurant, it was also surprising that they didn’t have half portions considering that I could probably get 3 meals out of a “single” serving here.
It’s not normal. It’s actually ridiculous
Portion sizes in Australia have remained ‘normal’ and it’s quite common for a group to order fewer mains to share than there are people in the group. My wife and I will often have an entree each, but then share a main, and we always appreciate leaving the restaurant not feeling stuffed and uncomfortable.
[removed]
The book “How Not to Diet” by Dr. Michael Greger does a deep dive on the American obesity problem. So much so that I don’t remember it completely. There’s lots of factors, like the introduction of processed food, and he dives into the early history of processed foods to modern times, and how it affects one country vs another country in similar/different development
damn that bagel T H I C C
I’m old enough to know bagels were not 3” 20 years ago.
I also was shorter 20 years ago, let her age in peace
What’s the source on this? Is there an official bureau that keeps track of bagel data or something? Wtf is this
Americans and their carb-focused food pyramid
As the only vegan within my friends and family group, they often come to me for advice on losing weight. Idk how vegan equals qualified nutritionist. Anyways, I just tell them, “portion control”. I don’t even mention veganism. This circumvents them from projecting the responsibility of their diet on to me, since they really want to say, “I just can’t go vegan” as an excuse not to lose weight. Cheers.
I’ll say specific food sizes arent ~that~ different in Europe but the drink sizes in America are insane
Europe’s large for a soda is America’s small
I’d say our beer glasses are larger but that’s mainly at fests and not our daily drink, can’t imagine half a gallon of coke with my burger
Another thing to note is the ingredients of what we eat, a bratwurst and ‘roll’ has better ingredients in germany than America’s hotdog. I’ll admit American food is delicious but I do gain 10+ pounds every time I make a trip there
I don’t think we’ll see any big results on fighting obesity until we address car dependency