Portion sizes have grown over the last 60 years and, with them, so have individuals. The average adult weighs 26 pounds more today than in the 1950s. There are many reasons the extra weight, like sedentary lifestyles and the higher cost of healthy foods, but larger portion sizes are definitely a factor. The CDC reported that the average restaurant meal these days is quadruple the size that it was in the ‘50s, and they have an infographic to prove it.
Kelly Brownell, a professor at Yale University , gave some concrete examples of the supersized servings in an interview with NPR. “What used to be the large size at McDonald's is now the small serving of fries,” he said. “A muffin used to be smaller than a baseball; now it can be as big as a softball. And this gets multiplied by many products in the food system.” Moreover, a recent article on the Huffington Post stated that “A whopping 96 percent of America's chain restaurant entrees fell outside the range of the USDA's recommendations for fat, saturated fat and sodium per meal, according to a new analysis from the RAND corporation, published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.”
Helen Wu, the lead researcher for the study, helped to evaluate more than 30,000 items in 245 restaurants around the country in 2010. She and her team found that although the majority of dishes were within the USDA limits for calories in a single meal (667), the levels of fat, saturated fat, and sodium in each dishes were above what the USDA recommends in one meal. “Many items may appear healthy based on calories, but actually can be very unhealthy when you consider other important nutrition criteria,” Wu said. The report showed that the average dinner entrée in a restaurant contained 1,512 mg of sodium, which is more than what the CDC thinks is an appropriate amount for the whole day. That same average dinner entrée contained approximately 32 grams of fat and 12 grams of saturated fat.
Even if you were already aware that food in restaurants is often unhealthy, some findings in the report might be surprising. For example, family-style chain restaurants were found to have “significantly more” fat, sodium , and calories than what you could get at a fast food drive-thru. Also unexpected was that the fat, sodium, and calorie content in appetizers was often higher than anywhere else on the menu.
Wu summed up the issue when she said, “If you're eating out tonight, your chances of finding an entree that's truly healthy are painfully low.”
