Sugar is poison

[HVC]

Portion sizes just doesn't sound plausible.  How many people eat out with any sort of regularity?  I agree that portion sizes are ridiculous, but over-eating once a week doesn't seem like an efficient way to get fat.  Chugging a 2-liter bottle of soda a day is another matter entirely.

One would assume that if one is accustomed to large portion sizes away from home they would increase their portion sizes at home think that the restaurant one is the standard. At least that's what i would think, but i could be dead wrong.

[Malthus]

Portion sizes just doesn't sound plausible.  How many people eat out with any sort of regularity?  I agree that portion sizes are ridiculous, but over-eating once a week doesn't seem like an efficient way to get fat.  Chugging a 2-liter bottle of soda a day is another matter entirely.

First, some people (such as those who work outside the home) eat out far more frequently than you might think - at my office, practically everyone except me eats lunch in the food court. I brown-bag lunch, but that is unusual.

Second, increased portion sizes doesn't apply only to eating out. It can be seen in such things as the size of bags of chips or ready-to-eat meals of various sorts.

Both of these are based on more than anecdote, there is ample evidence that portion sizes have increased over the last few decades. See the link above.

Basically, people prepare food from scratch less then they used to, relying more on either premade meals of various sorts, or eating out; and when they do, the amounts of food considered to be 'one individual serving' is larger than it used to be.

Studies (quoted above) demonstrate that, when a larger meal is put in front of people, people tend to eat more than they otherwise would with a smaller meal. For example, if a meal consists of a sandwich of size X for lunch, they tend to eat the whole thing; if later they have a sandwich of size X + 1/3 X, they will tend to eat the whole thing again, rather than throwing out the extra 1/3 X.

Thus, increased portion sizes leads to fatter people.

[Malthus]

Increased portion sizes on nearly everything over the last 30 plus years.

Might be something to that.  I have noticed plates in restaurants getting bigger and bigger.  In some places they are practically serving dishes now.

As I said above, this process is further advanced in the US than in Canada. When I travel to the US with the family, on occasion I have literally ordered what would be suitable on paper for a single person (appetizer, main and desert) and fed my whole family on it - two adults and a kid - with food left over. 

[The Brain]

Increased portion sizes on nearly everything over the last 30 plus years.

Might be something to that.  I have noticed plates in restaurants getting bigger and bigger.  In some places they are practically serving dishes now.

As I said above, this process is further advanced in the US than in Canada. When I travel to the US with the family, on occasion I have literally ordered what would be suitable on paper for a single person (appetizer, main and desert) and fed my whole family on it - two adults and a kid - with food left over.

Naturally American christian babies are fatter now than they have been. That's kind of what we are discussing.

[Malthus]

Naturally American christian babies are fatter now than they have been. That's kind of what we are discussing.

Silly man. I don't feed my family Christian babies. 

Those tidbits I reserve for myself.

[grumbler]

Portion sizes just doesn't sound plausible.  How many people eat out with any sort of regularity?  I agree that portion sizes are ridiculous, but over-eating once a week doesn't seem like an efficient way to get fat.  Chugging a 2-liter bottle of soda a day is another matter entirely.

Chugging 2-liter bottles of soda every day doesn't sound plausible.

[HVC]

Portion sizes just doesn't sound plausible.  How many people eat out with any sort of regularity?  I agree that portion sizes are ridiculous, but over-eating once a week doesn't seem like an efficient way to get fat.  Chugging a 2-liter bottle of soda a day is another matter entirely.

Chugging 2-liter bottles of soda every day doesn't sound plausible.

i knew someone wo did. little French Canadian guy in my class. Scrawny too. Must have had diabetes or something

[DGuller]

I did close to that for many years.    That's just 6-8 glasses a day.  If you drink that instead of water, that's just the recommended daily fluid intake.

[Valmy]

I am suggesting that the food choices people had were superior.  There was far less prefab garbage masquerading as real food back then.

edit: also, come to think of it, yes people also had superior eating habits in general.

People are becoming worse as time goes by

Wait no you are saying the food we are provided with is worse

[The Brain]

Americans stopped acting in a plausible manner generations ago.

[HVC]

I did close to that for many years.    That's just 6-8 glasses a day.  If you drink that instead of water, that's just the recommended daily fluid intake.

i'm thinking more along the lines of sugar intake, not liquid intake.

[Strix]

A lot of fat people that eat more then they should and dont exercise as much as they should.  The sytem you are looking for is something that will force people to do less of the former and more of the latter.  Lots of people make lots of money selling that "system" and yet we still have a lot of fat people.  Why is that?  because at the end of the day food is plentiful and excerise is hard to do for a fat person.

Yes but that was all still true in the 70s and 80s and we were alot thinner.  That is what I do not get.

But maybe it is the tendency to eat out more as Brazen said.

You have to look at how much society has changed. Video games and computers are much more available and popular than the 70's and 80's. Cars are more available for transportation. People just don't have the need or desire to exercise as much as they did in the 70's and 80's, and entertainment is more geared towards non-physical participation.

[dps]

There's no doubt in my mind that people, particularly young people, are much less physically active now than they were when I was a kid.  For kids at least, it wasn't called exercise back then, it was just getting outside and playing.  Certainly, children still do that, but not nearly as much as we used to.  And parents weren't as fearful of letting us out of their sight as they are now.  From about ages 6 or 7, we had bikes and we'd ride them all over town.  It wasn't anything at all out of the ordinary to bike to a friend's house several neighborhoods away, or to walk to a movie or to ball practice.  As long as your parents thought you we careful to look each way before you crossed the street, they weren't worried about your safety--and if they didn't think you were responsible enough to look both ways, you just got told you couldn't go--unless it was a special occassion like your friend's birthday party, they sure weren't going to take time out from their schedule to drive you somewhere to play.

And speaking of special occasions like birthdays, well, special occasions were almost the only times we ate out.  Now, I know plenty of people who eat out for at least one meal a day, and often 2 or 3 times a day.

And yes, portion have gotten a lot bigger, too, even with just beverages.  When you were at your friend's house playing, when you'd take a break and go inside to get something to drink, your friend's mom would get two glasses, fill 'em up with ice cubes, and then poor a soft drink into them.  With all that ice, it wouldn't take but about half of a 16 oz bottle to fill both glasses, and the rest got put back in the refrigerator for the next day.  Now, everybody gets their own 20 or 24 oz drink, and goes through 2 or more of those a day.

[Slargos]

I'm sure you're right, dps, but that kind of reasoning has been made utterly worthless since all I can think about when I hear it is a wrinkly old prune with his face full of liver spots, shaking his cane at the world. 

[alfred russel]

Portion sizes just doesn't sound plausible.  How many people eat out with any sort of regularity?  I agree that portion sizes are ridiculous, but over-eating once a week doesn't seem like an efficient way to get fat.  Chugging a 2-liter bottle of soda a day is another matter entirely.

So the invention of Coca-Cola in the late 1980s is the cause of the epidemic?