Portion Sizes

The weather cooperated tonight so I got to do the work that I planned on doing last night plus what I was planning on tonight.  But that meant that I didn't catch the news once again.  But I did read an article earlier today and saw another post on Google+ with yet another talking about similar things.



The one that I read this morning (here it is) talked about how a study looked at the top 245 restaurants in the United States.  From those restaurants they looked at the nutritional values of over 28000 recipes.  What they found is that 96% of the entrees had more fat, calories, and sodium than what is recommended by the USDA per meal (daily average divided by 3).  And we aren't talking about that being by a little.  A large percent of these entrees gave more of each than the entire day's recommendation.  They found that appetizers were even worse than the entrees.  They even found that most items listed as healthy, though not as bad as the rest, were over the suggested limits.


The other story (right here) talks about the difference between portion sizes in the 1950's versus current.  Look at the typical beverage and you see it is 5 times the size, entree is more than twice the size, and starch is roughly twice the size.  What makes it worse is that the beverages contain more sugar, the entrees and starches contain more fat and sodium.


And that is what bothers me!  You look at the number of overweight people in the United States and just how overweight they are.  I'm sure that someone has done a study and found that it is proportional to the increase in portion sizes and increase in fat content.  This is a piece of the puzzle as to why people are taking so many pills now days.  And this is putting a strain on the entire healthcare system.  I get that it tastes good, I'm a victim of that as well.  What I don't get is why, with all the cooking shows and networks, we can't get some healthy cooking suggestions so that we can get healthier as a country.  But I guess that won't happen because the money is behind promoting the thing that are high profit which equates to high fat, sodium, and sugar.