Portion distortion
What I talk about when I talk about too small or too big portions, how eating ultra-processed plant-based foods might be bad for longevity and the continued hope for 3D-foods.
Maybe you’ve heard the chatter surrounding Chipotle, which came under fire recently for skimping on portion sizes. I haven’t eaten there in a long stretch so I can’t report on what they’re doing. But I have been to Peet’s Coffee. Recently, on a flight out of SFO, I stopped first to get coffee. Everyone ahead of me ordered coffee and something to eat – pumpkin bread was the leader in the 8 minutes I was in line.
While waiting, I noticed what employees grabbed with their tongs. Giant. Huge. Slices of sweet, rich pumpkin bread. It shocked me, but everything at the airport shocks me. When I wheel my suitcase into Hudson News or CIBO Express, I’m frustrated by my inability to find anything in a single serving. It’s all just giant drinks and equally giant bags of snacks. Remember cans? Easy to recycle and small so that you don’t have to pee during your flight? Who needs a meal-size bag of snacks that doesn’t seal and requires you to be extra diligent and refrain from mindlessly eating? (Chex Mix is my Kryptonite and thus I never buy it.)
This isn’t a new thought, but it dawned on me while I stood in line that portion sizes – and serving sizes for that matter – are universally out of whack. Or maybe just out of whack in the US? That’s probably the case, but it’s a guess.
Portion size is what people generally eat. Serving size is supposed to also be what people generally eat – one cookie, one piece of bread, one cup of yogurt – but it’s what appears on a nutrition facts label and it was somewhat newly increased by the FDA to match what people actually eat versus what maybe they “should” eat. Perhaps to maintain a steady weight but that’s not what it means either.
When the FDA first created a “serving size” it was based on consumption surveys done in the late 70s. Obesity has been on the rise since the 80s. Today, serving sizes on nutrition facts panels are based on data spanning from 2003 to 2008. A lot of people are watching GLP-1 drugs closely to see how it changes consumption patterns. Maybe it’s possible, although also so doubtful, that our consumption habits will drop for the next iteration of labeling? It certainly won’t drop if chains like Peet’s keep upping their single slabs of baked goods.
Like people TikTok-ing about Chipotle, there’s great chatter about the rise in obesity and many (myself included) like to blame ultra-processed foods. They’re bad but I need to re-jigger my finger pointing because portion sizes are certainly a culprit, too. I know several people on Ozempic and other GLP-1s and the biggest change I’ve seen is that they eat less. Their portion sizes have magically reduced. Poof! They can no longer eat a massive slab of pumpkin bread.
There are many reasons Peet’s et al might benefit from serving big portions: it doesn’t want complaints from customers, it wants repeat customers, ingredients are usually cheap – farmer subsidies and the like, and they want to offer value. Is social media and our ability to instantly share and complain one of the issues here? When I go thrift shopping and try on a dress that fits snug and look at the size and see that it’s a 16, I know the world has changed. (In a dress from today I’m a 4-6.)
Why have snacks gotten so much bigger? A colleague explained to me that the packaging is partially at fault—the film for a small bag of chips is more expensive — based on profits — than the film for a big bag of chips. I’ve ranted here before about how Big Food wants to give us ever more reasons to snack. It’s all correleated—ultra-processed food, portion sizes, constant availability, and eating on the go.
Last night, I stopped off at a girlfriends house and her kids were eating dinner. On their plates were tiny amounts of food—something dark green, some protein and some carbs. They haven’t been to SFO yet, thankfully, so they don’t yet know what they’re missing. Where do we start, be it education or shifts in portion sizes, changes in what food companies are allowed to sell? With kids, always with the kids.
Want to dig into this topic more? Here’s a great study from 2005 in the Journal of Nutrition, a book: Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, and an article in The Guardian by Bee Wilson, who I like a lot.
I’m just here for the tidbits:
A new analysis is out on whether ultra-processing affects cardiovascular health benefits conveyed from eating plant-based foods. Plant-based foods are generally recognized as better for us than animal-based foods—many doctors and nutritionists I talked to for my book said that transitioning from meat to plant-based meat was a great first step. But, researchers found that any consumption of UPF – even plant-based – has a deleterious effect on our lifespan. A smattering of UPF plant-based foods that you might be eating: chickpea puffs, cauliflower-crust pizza, plant-based meat and sausage, soda, and candy, gluten-free bread–actually most bread and most anything keto branded. Here’s the research in brief via Washington Post.
The culinary engineering used to ensure our supermarket bread last weeks if not months. Hint: it’s ultra-processed too. Via WSJ
Startups are still trying to make 3D-printed foods a thing. One creative twist comes from BeeHex, which initially made a terrible pizza (I tried it). It created a machine that allows customers to create personalized cake decoration. This sounds fun and makes sense! And… it was briefly at one Kroger location in Ohio. Others seem implausible to actually scale like plant-based salmon from Revo Foods and plant-based bacon from Cocuus, which I tried at Future-Food Tech and was not in love with. The biggest rollout, from Israel-based Redefine Meat, shifted it’s process for “steak” to what they are calling “additive manufacturing.” So…not 3D? via The Grocer UK.
Tender Food, a plant-based meat company that began at Harvard, closed an $11-million Series A investment round. The “meat” is made from a technique I wrote about in my book that was originally used with soy and is called fiber spinning. (It’s original form used a lot of water, but that may no longer be accurate.) You can order Tender protein at Clover Food Lab, a meatless chain in the Boston area. Have any of you tried it? Please write in and let me know what you thought.
Where you can find me:
I profiled Prolific Machines for The Information. Read the PDF.
I wrote about how to get plastics out of our kitchens for Sierra Magazine.
What I’m reading:
I loved North Woods and strangely now I’m reading Birnam Wood – both tangentially about nature. Birnam Wood hasn’t gripped me yet, but we’ll see! I requested a review copy of Does Coffee Give You Cancer and I am looking forward to it.
Prices have increased. If restaurants reduce the portions and maintain the same prices they will lose a lot of business. I recently walked out of a smoothie bar because 1 smoothie cost $10.00. Certainly not something I can afford. This issue has a lot of layers. I'm glad you wrote about it! Such an interesting topic.
Hello Larissa, another great topic of food to think about! I also agree portion sizes are so big and my husband and I usually split whatever we order from a take-away or eating in restaurants. The other issue is the amount of wasted food. I do know of a non-profit here in Colorado called We Don’t Waste. They work with restaurants and food distributors to reduce hunger and food waste in the Denver metro area by recovering quality, unused food. Then they distribute it to other non-profits who get it to the consumer. I think this is brilliant. Just something I thought you might find interesting. Cheers!