Portion Sizes: Maybe the Metric System Would Help?

by Becca Krukowski

A friend of mine returned from a business trip recently with a food-related nugget that he thought would horrify me. While out of town, he went with some of his colleagues to a local favorite restaurant known for their steak dinners. The menu states that the steaks are served “family-style” and depending on the cut, come in 2-6 pound servings. The steaks are all priced “per pound” and, according to my friend, the menu helpfully recommended one pound per person (see picture), and so all of these men complied and ordered a pound of steak. Nonetheless, my friend was surprised to see hunks of meat arrive at the table. He had not realized that a pound was equivalent to 13 ounces (in fact, I told him, a pound actually contains 16 ounces).

I am not so naïve to think that restaurants follow standard portion sizes. But a pound of steak? 4 times the standard serving size? And the 6 pound serving that is available? That would be a perfect serving size, if you brought along 24 of your friends. However, I know this oversized meal isn’t very unusual—steakhouses regularly serve large portions of meat.

I don’t think this story would have impacted me so strongly, if I hadn’t just spoken with my father who told me a similar story. With my mother recently out of town, my father was responsible for his own hunting and gathering. He has recently been trying to eat more healthfully, so I was curious to see what he would substitute for the traditional hunting and gathering of a pizza. He told me that he decided to make turkey burgers for himself and my brother, and he bought some pre-formed 4 ounce patties. He reported to me that the patties looked way too small, so he squished together two patties for each of them. He ended the story by exclaiming that he realized later that he had made half-pound burgers!

It is clear that our conceptions of normal portion sizes are off, whether we are eating out or cooking at home. Education efforts have had very little impact on changing behaviors related to obesity, but what’s the alternative? Serve standard portion sizes in restaurants? Require labeling in restaurants to be in ounces rather than pounds? Well, neither of these options would have helped my father. Maybe changing to the metric system would help. 

Comments

[Mark]

The metric system has been blamed for the obesity epidemic in Australia.

http://calorielab.com/news/2005/12/09/australian-obesity-epidemic-caused-by-metric-system/

"I think the move to kilojoules was a huge problem in this country because nobody knows what a kilojoule is — they can’t possibly add them up."

[Noah]

Becca, how about using servings instead of pound fractions, ounces, or grams?

So, for the 6 pound supermeal at the Steakhouse, the menu would read: "24 servings of steak on your plate. Real men eat this in one sitting!"

-Noah

[Mara]

It's an interesting article but it's too bad that one of the people quoted felt the need to refer to certain states as the "blubber belt". It's clever and funny, but it also makes it seem like it's just a problem of a bunch of people being greedy (and, conveniently enough, most likely located in a *different* geographical area than one's self). Interesting to me is that areas which have longer winters might have an effect on how much junk food people consume.

[Mara]

I notice I posted this on wrong topic - I meant it to be for the previous, junk food one.

[Mara]

Becca writes: "He has recently been trying to eat more healthfully, so I was curious to see what he would substitute for the traditional hunting and gathering of a pizza."
Two things stand out here: first - women are still responsible for the *main* cooking and preparing of food, and second - what is so terrible about pizza? (A bad question to ask around Here, of course). There are tasty versions loaded down w/veggies, for instance. I so dislike the purist mind-set, where *every* bit of food must be absolutely perfect and beyond reproach. Of course, it's much easier to "eat right" when *someone else* is doing the cooking.