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Just Enough For
You: About Food Portions
Have you noticed that the size of muffins, candy bars, and soft
drinks has grown over the years? How about portions of restaurant
foods like pasta dishes, steaks, and french fries? As portion sizes
grow, people tend to eat more-often more than they need to stay
healthy.
Larger food portions have more calories. Eating more calories than
you need may lead to weight gain. Too much weight gain can put you
at risk for weight-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart
disease, and some cancers.
Managing your weight calls for more than just choosing a healthful
variety of foods like vegetables, fruits, grains (especially whole
grains), beans, and low-fat meat, poultry, and dairy products. It
also calls for looking at how much and how often you
eat. This brochure shows you how to use serving sizes to help you
eat just enough for you.
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What's the difference between a portion and a serving?
A "portion" is how much food you choose to eat, whether in a
restaurant, from a package, or in your own kitchen. A "serving"
is a standard amount set by the U.S. Government, or sometimes by
others for recipes, cookbooks, or diet plans. There are two
commonly used standards for serving sizes:
 The
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Guide
Pyramid is a healthy eating plan for people ages 2 and over.
It shows the recommended number of servings to eat from each of
five food groups every day to meet your nutrition needs, and it
defines serving sizes. (For more information, see The Food
Guide Pyramid under Additional Reading.)
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Nutrition Facts Label
is printed on most packaged foods. It tells you how many
calories and how much fat, carbohydrate, sodium, and other
nutrients are in one serving of the food. The serving size is
based on the amount of food people say they usually eat in one
sitting. This size is often different than the serving sizes in
the Food Guide Pyramid.
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 How
do I know how big my portions are?
For foods that don't have a Nutrition Facts label, such as
ground beef, use a kitchen scale to measure the food in ounces
(according to the Food Guide Pyramid, one serving of meat,
chicken, turkey, or fish is 2 to 3 ounces).
The portion size that you are used to eating may be equal to
two or three standard servings. Take a look at this Nutrition
Facts label for cookies. The serving size is two cookies, but
if you eat four cookies, you are eating two servings-and
double the calories, fat, and other nutrients in a standard
serving.
To see how many servings a package contains, check the
"servings per container" listed on the Nutrition Facts label.
You may be surprised to find that small containers often have
more than one serving inside.
Learning to recognize standard serving sizes can help you
judge how much you are eating. When cooking for yourself, use
measuring cups and spoons to measure your usual food portions
and compare them to standard serving sizes from Nutrition
Facts labels for a week or so. Put the measured food on a
plate before you start eating. This will help you see what one
standard serving of a food looks like compared to how much you
normally eat.
 Another
way to keep track of your portions is to use a food diary.
Writing down when, what, how much, where, and why you eat can
help you be aware of the amount of food you are eating and the
times you tend to eat too much. The chart below shows what 1
day of a person's food diary might look like.
After reading the food diary, you can see that this person
chose sensible portion sizes for breakfast and lunch-she ate
to satisfy her hunger. She had a large chocolate bar in the
afternoon for emotional reasons-boredom, not in response to
hunger. If you tend to eat when you are not hungry, try
doing something else, like taking a break to walk around the
block or call a friend, instead of eating.
By 8 p.m., this person was very hungry and ate large portions
of higher-fat, higher-calorie foods. If she had made an early
evening snack of fruit or pretzels, she might have been less
hungry at 8 p.m. and eaten less. She also may have eaten more
than she needed because she was at a social event, and was not
paying attention to how much she was eating. Through your
diary, you can become aware of the times and reasons you eat
too much, and try to make different choices in the future.
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THURSDAY
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Time
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Food
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Amount
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Place
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Hunger/Reason
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8am |
Coffee, black
Banana
Low-fat yogurt |
6 fl. oz.
1 medium
1 cup |
Home |
Slightly hungry |
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1pm
|
Turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread with mustard,
tomato, and lettuce
Potato chips, baked
Water |
3 oz. turkey, 1 slice American cheese, 2 slices bread
1 small bag, 1/2 oz.
16 fl. oz. |
Work |
Hungry |
|
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3pm
|
Chocolate bar |
King size (40z.) |
Work |
Not hungry/bored |
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8pm
|
Fried mozzarella sticks
Chicken Caesar-Salad
Breadsticks
Apple pie with vanilla ice cream
Soft drink |
4 each
2 cups lettuce, 6 oz. chicken, 6 tbs. dressing, 3/4 cup croutons
2 large
1/8 of 9-inch pie, 1 cup ice cream
12 fl. oz. |
Restaurant |
Very hungry/out with friends |
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How can I control portions at home?
You do not need to measure and count everything you eat for
the rest of your life-just long enough to recognize standard
serving sizes. Try these other ideas to help you control
portions at home:
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Is getting more food for your money always a good value?
Have you noticed that it only costs a few cents more to get a
larger size of fries or soft drink? Getting a larger portion
of food for just a little extra money may seem like a good
value, but you end up with more food and calories than you
need.
Before you buy your next "value combo," be sure you are making
the best choice for your health and your wallet. If you
are with someone else, share the large-size meal. If you are
eating alone, skip the special deal and just order what you
need.
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How can I control portions when eating out?
Research shows that the more often a person eats out, the more
body fat he or she has. Try to prepare more meals at home. Eat
out and get take-out foods less often. When you do eat away from
home, try these tips to help you control portions:
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Share your meal, order a half-portion, or order an
appetizer as a main meal.
|
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Take half or more of your meal home. You can even ask
for your half-meal to be boxed up before you begin eating so
you will not be tempted to eat more than you need. |
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Stop eating when you begin to feel full. Focus on
enjoying the setting and your friends or family for the rest
of the meal. |
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Avoid large beverages, such as "supersize" soft drinks.
They have a large number of calories. Order the small size,
choose a calorie-free beverage, or drink water with a slice of
lemon. |
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 When
traveling, bring along nutritious foods that will not
spoil such as fresh fruit, small cans of fruit, peanut butter
and jelly (spread both thin) sandwiches, whole grain crackers,
carrot sticks, air-popped popcorn, and bottled water. If you
stop at a fast food restaurant, choose one that serves salads,
or order the small burger with lettuce and tomato. Have water
or nonfat milk with your meal instead of a soft drink. If you
want french fries, order the small size. |
Remember...
 The
amount of calories you eat affects your weight and health. In
addition to selecting a healthful variety of foods, look at
the size of the portions you eat. Choosing nutritious foods
and keeping portion sizes sensible may help you reach and stay
at a healthy weight.
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Additional Reading
U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and
Promotion. The Food Guide Pyramid. Home and Garden
Bulletin No. 252. October 1996. Phone 1-888-878-3256.
www.usda.gov/cnpp/pyrabklt.pdf.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and
Promotion. How Much Are You Eating? Home and Garden
Bulletin No. 267-1. March 2002. Phone 1-888-878-3256.
www.usda.gov/cnpp/Pubs/Brochures/index.htm.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety and
Applied Nutrition. Guidance on How to Understand and Use the
Nutrition Facts Panel on Food Labels. June 2000.
www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/foodlab.html.
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Weight-control Information Network
1 WIN WAY
BETHESDA, MD 20892-3665
Phone: (202) 828-1025
FAX: (202) 828-1028
Toll-free number: 1-877-946-4627
Internet:
www.niddk.nih.gov/health/nutrit/nutrit.htm
E-mail:
win@info.niddk.nih.gov
The Weight-control Information Network (WIN) is a service of the
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
of the National Institutes of Health, which is the Department of
Health and Human Services' lead agency responsible for
biomedical research on nutrition and obesity. Authorized by
Congress (Public Law 103-43), WIN provides the general public,
health professionals, the media, and Congress with up-to-date,
science-based health information on weight control, obesity,
physical activity, and related nutritional issues.
WIN answers inquiries, develops and distributes publications,
and works closely with professional and patient organizations
and Government agencies to coordinate resources about weight
control and related issues.
Publications produced by WIN are reviewed by both NIDDK
scientists and outside experts. This publication was also
reviewed by Samuel Klein, M.D., Danforth Professor of Medicine
and Director, Center for Human Nutrition, Washington University,
and Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Ph.D., Post-doctoral Fellow, New York
Obesity Research Center, St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center.
This e-text is not copyrighted. WIN encourages users of this
e-pub to duplicate and distribute as many copies as desired.
|
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
National Institutes of Health
NIH Publication No. 03-5287
January 2003
e-text posted: March 2003 |
Source:
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/nutrit/pubs/justenuff/justenough.htm
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Take
seconds of vegetables or salads instead of higher-fat,
higher-calorie parts of a meal such as meats or desserts.
Try
to eat three sensible meals at regular times throughout
the day. Skipping meals may lead you to eat larger portions
of high-calorie, high-fat foods at your next meal or snack.
Eat breakfast every day.