Post No.: 0983
Furrywisepuppy says:
You can eat anything you want… in moderation. Everything is a poison in large enough doses – even substances that are good for us in smaller doses.
Most people are oblivious to how much fast food portion sizes have ballooned over the decades. In a competitive landscape, if some restaurants start selling bigger portions, others will feel they must too. And customers have come to expect these large serving sizes now otherwise they’ll feel short-changed.
People may have historically eaten hearty meals like pies, mash and gravy, hot pot or fish and chips too, but portion sizes were smaller and physical activity levels were much higher for manual workers like dock, mine or factory workers, and even generally around the home before all these labour-saving mod cons.
Restaurant and takeaway portion sizes are typically larger than home-cooked portions. There are generally no small or medium options anymore – just big and bigger. (The McDonald’s ‘super size’ option has at least been discontinued though.) There may be child-sized options but it feels awkward to order these for an adult.
Having more choice can be fantastic – like kebabs, pizzas, fried chicken and ribs – but we can end up wanting to eventually try everything. Delivery is also expected nowadays hence fewer people expend the energy to walk to and from a shop.
Sushi, for instance, can be healthy but, like with many cuisines from around the world – the westernised versions can be inflated in size and/or include inauthentic and typically fatty and/or sugary ingredients compared to the authentic versions, like mayonnaise, avocado or cream cheese. Taking a salad – it’s only healthy, balanced or low-calorie depending on the amount of additions like the dressing and croutons!
Pre-packaged items like family-sized snack packs are often consumed by one individual during one sitting. We’ll tend to consume a whole portion regardless of its size – the ‘unit bias’ leads us to consume not according to the total calories ingested but by a given unit or portion size. So if we normally eat 2 slices of toast then we’ll eat 2 slices regardless of how thick those slices are (up to a point), which can over time lead to over-consumption without realising. There’s also ‘hyperbolic discounting’, which leads us to prefer calories now instead of calories later. Understanding our psychological biases is useful for understanding many of our consumption habits. Manufacturers and marketers understand them… in order to exploit them!
You’d think that smaller portions would be more profitable for food manufacturers. But combining two portions into one package is cheaper. And if you’re going to eat it all as one meal, and you repeatedly do this, then it increases the total volume of product sold.
Relatedly, suggested serving sizes stated on food packaging are arbitrary – they’re often far smaller than people will realistically consume. But manufacturers do this to make their fat, sugar and salt statistics appear smaller. So a ready meal might look like it’s one meal for one person, but it’ll say on the back of the packaging that the suggested serving size is half of it, which won’t be enough to satisfy most people.
During times of high manufacturing costs, ‘shrinkflation’ – where package sizes sneakily shrink but the re-tail prices don’t – can be said to be a counteracting force to rising portion sizes. But manufacturers only do this to protect their profit margins – not because they care about their customers’ fuzzy waistlines!
A ‘new, improved recipe’ is frequently just because they’ve found a way to cut ingredients costs too – ‘skimpflation’ is when quality reduces but the retail price remains the same.
Beware of ‘diet’ versions of products – these may lead to complacency hence we may end up not employing as much self-control as we otherwise would and consequently eat more in total. ‘Diet’ packs are sometimes just slightly lighter in weight than the ‘regular’ packs (i.e. selling you more air); and if you don’t feel satisfied after one pack, you might consume two. But just because it’s marketed as a ‘healthier’ option – it doesn’t mean you can eat twice as much guilt-free(!)
Some stuff marketed as ‘healthier’ can contain more sugar and/or salt than the ‘regular’ versions, even if the fat content is lower. So ‘lower fat’ doesn’t mean low sugar or therefore necessarily low calories – we must still read and understand the ingredients lists and all of the nutritional information, and exert restraint. Some words used in the marketing or displayed on the packaging have legal definitions (that sometimes aren’t what you may think they mean e.g. ‘fresh’ things can still be many days old) while other words don’t. So rather than trust in the big words on the fronts of packaging, look at the words and numbers written in small on the back. (It’s often surprising how people fail to read the packaging and, say, end up eating raw porridge oats or cold crumpets(!) They can read the language but it’s all ‘too long; didn’t read’!)
‘Reduced salt, sugar or fat’ versions of products often use other ingredients to make up the flavour and texture or to help preserve it, which increases the processing. Artificial sweeteners taste sweet but since your body doesn’t get the energy it expects after tasting sweetness, you might feel hungrier and thus gorge during the next meal (read Post No.: 0910). Low-fibre meals are easier and faster to digest, but this can mean we won’t feel full for long, and consequently resort to snacking afterwards.
Although subjective, most lower-fat versions of products – like cheese or mayonnaise – taste worse too. Whipped ice cream looks more voluminous to the eye but it’s just added air, which could be good from a calorie perspective but bad from a value and taste perspective.
Regulations vary from country to country thus we must learn which terms – like ‘good for you’, ‘nutritious’ or ‘high/low in…’ – need to be backed up by an approved specific health or nutrition claim. ‘Low fat’ is different to ‘lower fat’ or ‘reduced fat’. In the EU, ‘low fat’ must be under 3% fat for solids – although that makes no claims on the amount of sugar or salt contained, which could be high or even increased. Meanwhile, ‘lower fat’ can still be quite high in fat – it just needs to be lower in fat compared to the ‘regular’ version. How much less isn’t regulated so it could be just a miniscule amount too.
Something can be gluten-free and dairy-free but then be high in salt, fat and/or sugar. But while they’ll obviously shout about their product being gluten-free and dairy-free, they won’t shout about it being high in salt, fat and/or sugar on the packaging or in their commercials! In fact they’ll try their best to keep quiet about that and hope you won’t notice. It’s the ‘halo effect’ in action whenever we assume that something being healthy in one respect means that it’s healthy in all respects (e.g. something being natural, vegetarian or low-fat means that it’s low in calories, salt or additives).
Our self-control can be influenced by the self-control of those around us. So if others cave into having dessert, so might you. Couples can drag each other down if they’re both unhealthy eaters or at least one of them is. They make each other seem ‘comparatively not so bad’. Couples often serve each other similar-sized portions at the dinner table hence if one partner is much larger and/or does more physical activity than the other, the smaller partner might end up gradually becoming overweight. Meal times could be changed so that each person serves themselves or picks morsels up from the communal bowls and plates as and when they feel like eating another bite (like how traditional Oriental dinners are like).
Sometimes athletes suffer from a long-term injury or simply retire but, despite a massive reduction in activity levels, they don’t sufficiently adjust the amount they eat thus they gain weight.
People with high BMI levels may not misperceive what a ‘regular’ portion size is but may nevertheless consume larger portions, especially when it comes to less healthful options like crisps and chocolate compared to more healthful options like almonds or strawberries.
One obvious way to avoid unhealthy diets or overeating is to avoid purchasing unhealthy options or offering large portion sizes in the first place. We tend to stick to the defaults when unsure thus making a moderate portion size the ‘default’ on any menu – rather than presenting various portion sizes with equal emphasis for each (especially when they come with confusing names like ‘tall’, ‘grande’, ‘venti’ or ‘trenta’) – will encourage more people to select that size.
Many people also eat too rapidly or mindlessly, partly because of hectic schedules or eating whilst working at a desk. Some people/cultures know no other way than to wolf their food down that the idea of bones being in their food (e.g. in fish) frightens them. Instead of eating slowly, they expect no bones so that they can eat fast – or what they think is at a normal pace. It may therefore be advantageous to be raised with the expectation that bones might be in meat dishes, which will result in people naturally chewing their food more carefully, eating slower and mindfully savouring the experience of eating more. Try to make every morsel last a while in your mouth before you swallow.
Now polishing off a large portion because one doesn’t wish to waste the food, but then not compensating by eating less the next meal, is ultimately a waste and bad for one’s waistline because one didn’t need to consume that much. It’s better to share that serving with someone else, or save/doggy bag what’s left for a later meal. Woof!
Minimise how much food you throw away. Just don’t buy, touch or serve yourself something in the first place if you’re not going to eat it all because waste is bad for the environment even if you can personally financially afford it. Surely most people should recognise their weekly habits and learn from experience how much will and won’t be eaten, and be able to adjust.
However, a couple of reasons why fruits and vegetables commonly get wasted is because of the intention of eating them but ultimately going for processed snacks instead when hungry. There’s also the signalling they want the cashiers and other shoppers to see – they don’t want to be perceived as unhealthy individuals or irresponsible parents. But they’re doubly irresponsible if they buy something then let it go to waste!
Many modern consumers cannot judge for themselves whether something is still fine to consume or not, or whether it could be cooked, reheated or put in the freezer. This ought to be basic survival knowledge. Many even confuse ‘display until’, ‘sell by’, ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ dates even though they’re self-explanatory!
Farmers might waste crops because the cost of harvesting the resultant crop outweighs the price of selling it; perhaps because the produce isn’t cosmetically good enough for a supermarket. Supermarkets might waste food because they prefer to over-stock than under-stock in case customers go to a competitor if they can’t get what they want. And they mightn’t donate the surplus away due to logistical costs.
It should be culturally embarrassing to waste food when millions of people are still hungry in this world and when waste adds to landfill and inefficiently depletes environmental resources. Food is wasted at all stages, from production, retail and at home. Businesses waste billions of pounds of food annually in total, whether this is because of or in spite of their profit-maximisation motives.
Things are hopefully improving though through the use of better data analytics to help optimise stock levels, customer education, embracing ‘imperfect’ produce, and dynamic pricing to encourage the purchase of products nearing expiration, for example.
Woof. Use the Twitter comment button below to tell us whether you agree that we should feel ashamed for wasting anything.
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