Not So Fun Fact of the Day: In 1970 15% of Americans were obese, where today 30% of considered obese.
Articles of the Day: Portion Size, Then Vs. Now. Take this quiz to see if you can recognize What 100 calories look like.
Sometimes we know what we should eat, but we are just not sure HOW MUCH we should eat. Portion sizes in America have grown out of control in the past 40 years. In 1970, 47% of Americans were overweight or obese, compared to today where 66% of the population is overweight or obese. A bagel in 1970 was 3 inches and 140 calories, but today a normal bagel is 5-6 inches and 350 calories. Even our dinner plates have grown from 10 inches in 1990 to 12 inches today! So how do you know what a proper serving is?? Below you will find tables for each nutritional group (click on one to make it bigger) that outlines the correct serving sizes of most basic foods. Next time you sit down to eat a steak, remember the picture of the deck of cards and decide how many servings your steak really is!
When eating packaged foods, it is very important to look at the nutrition label to check the serving size. Many seemingly single serving packages, like bags of chips, pretzels, and muffins are really multiple servings. For example, Uncle Wally's fat free gourmet corn muffins have 130 calories per muffin, but there are 2 servings per muffin (which will cost you 260 calories). Who walks around cutting their muffins in half? Not me! Another sneaky food is cereal. Especially the very dense cereal like granola and grape-nuts. Pay special attention to the serving sizes here, because what many American's consider a bowl of cereal, is really 2-4 servings! Talk about starting your day off with a bang (more like a calorie bomb)! Moral of the story is, until you can properly eye ball serving sizes bust out the measuring cup just to be sure!
Yours truly,
Lauren G.
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