Everyday Systems

This is a very interesting article from the small plate movement website which discusses how subconsiously influential plate size and portion size are, whether you are a phd, nutritionist or a 5 year old.


http://smallplatemovement.org/doc/big_portions.pdf

Terrific article! Thanks so much for posting it. I don't think I/we can be reminded too often about how external factors overwhelm our capacity to judge portion size and exercise restraint.

Interesting how almost everyone denies being influenced by the serving size factor, no matter how thoroughly it is explained to them. No-one is as vulnerable to influence as the person who denies they can be influenced.

This is a post I made three years ago:

Last night I was reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and there was an explanation of how supersizing got started.

"...the sodamakers don't deserve credit for the invention of supersizing. That distinction goes to a man named David Wallerstein. Until his death in 1993, Wallerstein served on the board of directors at McDonald's, but in the fifties and sixties, he worked for chain of movie theaters in Texas, where he labored to expand sales of soda and popcorn -- the high mark-up items that theaters depend on for their profitability. As the story is told in John Love's official history of McDonald's, Wallerstein tried everything he could think of to goose up sales -- two-for-one deals, matinee specials -- but found he simply could not induce customers to buy more than one soda and one bag of popcorn. He thought he knew why: Going for seconds makes people feel piggish.

Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda -- a lot more -- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. This was born the two-quart bucket of popcorn, the sixty-four ounce Big Gulp, and in time, the Big Mac and jumbo fries, though Ray Kroc himself took some convincing. In 1968 Wallerstein went to work at McDonald's, but try as he might, he couldn't convince Kroc, the company's founder, of supersizing's magic powers.

"If people want more fries," Kroc told him, "they can buy two bags." Wallerstein patiently explained that McDonald's customers did want more but were reluctant to buy a second bag. "They don't want to look like gluttons."

Kroc remained skeptical, so Wallerstein went looking for proof. He began staking out McDonald's outlets in and around Chicago, observing how people ate. He saw customers noisily draining their sodas, and digging infinitesimal bits of salt and burnt spud out of their little bags of French fries. After Wallerstein presented his findings, Kroc relented and approved supersized portions, and the dramatic spike in sales confirmed the marketer's hunch. Deep cultural taboos against gluttony -- one of the seven deadly sins, after all -- had been holding us back. Wallerstein's dubious achievement was to devise the dietary equivalent of a papal dispensation: Supersize it! He had discovered the secret to expanding the (supposedly) fixed human stomach."

Well, we seem to have lost the taboo against gluttony, thanks to Wallerstein. Amazing how one marketing tool can end up making so much difference! Many of the things that are problematic for us in terms of diet now are the results of things the food industry and marketing have done.

_________________

Interesting... but here's why I don't think plate size is the first thing one should focus on (I don't worry about it at all):

In the U.S. at least, the vast majority of the increase in caloric intake since the 1970s has come from snacks. For women, it's more than 100% -- calories from meals, supersized and all, actually went down.

http://home.uchicago.edu/~jmshapir/obesity.pdf

(page 101)

This makes sense to me. When you see excess, it looks excessive. That's embarrassing. Granted, deceptive packaging mitigates this a bit, but I think the outrage over supersizing that you see in the media and elsewhere is evidence of this. There is no similar outrage against snacking -- a FAR bigger contributor of excess calories and a far stranger phenomenon than big meals, historically speaking. So it seems we do have some residual aversion to being perceived as gluttons after all. Limit yourself to one plate and use that residual aversion to your advantage!

Reinhard

Thanks for posting this!

While I agree that using smaller plates shouldn't be a top priority/first step -- it may not be necessary for everyone or even helpful when someone is establishing habit -- I have found it to be a very easy and painless way to keep my portions in check. I think the smaller plates can be especially useful for those of us who are shorter/smaller and don't have huge caloric needs.

I had no idea dinner plates were getting larger until we bought new dishes last year. I'd had the same set of every day dishes for about twenty years. I finally got tired of looking at the same plates day in and day out so I bought a new set. Imagine my surprise when the new dinner plates didn't fit in my dishwasher! I have the type with three racks and had to take out the bottom rack and lower the middle rack all the way to the bottom to fit them in. The old dishes are 10 1/4 inches in diameter, the new ones are 11 1/2!

Mentioned this to a few friends and found out it's not an isolated incident.

TunaFishKid wrote:I had no idea dinner plates were getting larger until we bought new dishes last year. I'd had the same set of every day dishes for about twenty years. I finally got tired of looking at the same plates day in and day out so I bought a new set. Imagine my surprise when the new dinner plates didn't fit in my dishwasher! I have the type with three racks and had to take out the bottom rack and lower the middle rack all the way to the bottom to fit them in. The old dishes are 10 1/4 inches in diameter, the new ones are 11 1/2!

Mentioned this to a few friends and found out it's not an isolated incident.

A friend of the family had the same problem -- only hers didn't fit in the dishwasher with two racks!

All our dishes are huge compared to earlier times, I have some china from my grandma, the cereal bowls are small, the tea cups appear almost miniature by today's huge mug standards and as said, the plates appear to be saucers compared to today's dnnerware.

Strawberry Roan wrote:All our dishes are huge compared to earlier times, I have some china from my grandma, the cereal bowls are small, the tea cups appear almost miniature by today's huge mug standards and as said, the plates appear to be saucers compared to today's dnnerware.

I put one of my old coffee cups under my new Keurig single-cup coffee maker and pressed "small". It overflowed!

And that reminds me... Watch an old movie from the thirties, forties or even fifties. When they sit down at a lunch counter and order a Coke, they get a tiny glass - about 6 oz., I'd say. (I found a pic!)

wosnes wrote: A friend of the family had the same problem -- only hers didn't fit in the dishwasher with two racks!

Holy cow!

TunaFishKid wrote:

Strawberry Roan wrote:All our dishes are huge compared to earlier times, I have some china from my grandma, the cereal bowls are small, the tea cups appear almost miniature by today's huge mug standards and as said, the plates appear to be saucers compared to today's dnnerware.

I put one of my old coffee cups under my new Keurig single-cup coffee maker and pressed "small". It overflowed!

And that reminds me... Watch an old movie from the thirties, forties or even fifties. When they sit down at a lunch counter and order a Coke, they get a tiny glass - about 6 oz., I'd say. (I found a pic!)

And you know what else I noticed? People used to actually dress up to go to a lunch counter, heck I was recently at a funeral and nobody looked this good. Well, my husband and I did but we are "old school".
Thanks for the pic, looks like the Woolworths where I grew up.

Strawberry Roan wrote: And you know what else I noticed? People used to actually dress up to go to a lunch counter, heck I was recently at a funeral and nobody looked this good. Well, my husband and I did but we are "old school".
Thanks for the pic, looks like the Woolworths where I grew up.

Oh, don't get me started. It makes me so angry when I get dressed up to go to a really nice restaurant and at the table next to me I see jeans and flip-flops!

TunaFishKid wrote:

Strawberry Roan wrote: And you know what else I noticed? People used to actually dress up to go to a lunch counter, heck I was recently at a funeral and nobody looked this good. Well, my husband and I did but we are "old school".
Thanks for the pic, looks like the Woolworths where I grew up.

Oh, don't get me started. It makes me so angry when I get dressed up to go to a really nice restaurant and at the table next to me I see jeans and flip-flops!

Having spent a lot of time at Woolworth's lunch counters during my early years, I'm not so sure that the people dressed up to go there, but were dressed for work.

wosnes wrote:

TunaFishKid wrote:

Strawberry Roan wrote: And you know what else I noticed? People used to actually dress up to go to a lunch counter, heck I was recently at a funeral and nobody looked this good. Well, my husband and I did but we are "old school".
Thanks for the pic, looks like the Woolworths where I grew up.

Oh, don't get me started. It makes me so angry when I get dressed up to go to a really nice restaurant and at the table next to me I see jeans and flip-flops!

Having spent a lot of time at Woolworth's lunch counters during my early years, I'm not so sure that the people dressed up to go there, but were dressed for work.

That's truw wosnes, but sadly today many do not dress for work either.

I have the plates we ate off of as a child--purchased in the mid-60s. At first glace they look like 11 inch plates, but they have an 1 1/2 in rim! When I measured the actual eating surface from inner rim to inner rim I come up with 7 1/2 inches! No wonder I was a thin child.

Anyone else old enough to remember those small pop bottles that held only about 8 ounces. I remember when we used to share 16 ou bottles because they were so big!