PORTIONS

Photos in Lunch Trays Increase Veggie Consumption in Kids

2012-02-03T13:42:00.001-07:00

While the focus of healthy eating tableware tends to be on limiting portions of carbs and proteins, a study group out of Minnesota took a different slant with a group of kids by putting photos of vegetables in their lunch trays - and it worked!

The study, recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the consumption of carrots and green beans at a school cafeteria, comparing eating patterns on a day with pictures of carrots and green beans placed in the bottom of the tray, to a day when there were no pictures placed in the tray. Kids helped themselves on both days to these vegetables as they wished, and were not aware that their selection or eating patterns were being recorded.

They found that the number of kids who selected green beans more than doubled (from 6.3% to 14.8%), and the number who selected carrots more than tripled (from 11.6% to 36.8%). However, the number of kids choosing these vegetables overall was still low; further, the amount consumed was low, and did not meet government recommendations.

What this study teaches us is that the power of suggestion can have an impact on helping kids make healthier choices, with minimal additional cost above other much more expensive interventions such as structured classroom teaching. While the classroom teaching is a crucial part of teaching our kids to eat healthy, let's not forget that a picture speaks a thousand words!

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How Plate and Tablecloth Color Can Curb Your Portions!

2012-01-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

It is well known that we tend to serve up larger portions of food on larger plates - decreasing dinnerware size is often recommended as one strategy for weight management. However, new research suggests that it is not only the size of our plates that we should pay attention to. It turns out that color contrast from both plate and tablecloth can affect how much we ladle up as well - and in opposite ways!

The first study, conducted by Koert Van Ittersum and Brian Wansink, asked 47 students from Georgia Tech University to serve up a target amount of cereal on small and large white plates, using black or white tablecloths as a background. As expected, larger portions were served up on the larger plates. What was very interesting was that when the large white plates were placed on a black tablecloth, the students served up nearly 10% more on their plate, compared to when the white plate was placed on a white tablecloth. Also interesting was that when small white plates were used on a black tablecloth, serving sizes were underestimated. In other words, serving sizes were more accurate when the plate and tablecloth color were the same.

The second study examined the effect of plate color on serving size. Participants were asked to serve up pasta with a red (tomato) or a white (alfredo) sauce on red or white plates. When the color of the pasta matched the plate, the amount of food that was ladled up was 28% larger than when the plate color contrasted with the food color.

A visual illusion, known as the Debouef illusion, is thought to be behind these findings. The premise behind this is that sizes (eg of food portions) appear different to us, depending on background shape sizes and colors. Interesting!

The take home messages from these studies are to have a contrast in color between your food and your plate, but keep the color of tablecloth and plate the same.

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Science Behind Curbing Your Appetite With Small Frequent Meals

2012-01-01T10:00:00.001-07:00

With the holidays behind you and New Years' Resolutions in tow, take the opportunity to reevaluate your meal structure! As part of a weight loss or weight management lifestyle strategy, it is often recommended to eat small, frequent meals, rather than having three squares a day.   A recent study, which examined the 24 hour trends in an important hormone called PYY, sheds some new light on why small frequent meals may be so effective to curb hunger and help prevent overeating.

PYY is a hormone secreted by the gastrointestinal tract in response to a meal. When released, PYY stimulates a sense of fullness by slowing down the emptying of the stomach, and stimulating the 'fullness centre' in the hypothalamus of the brain. Additionally, PYY may also increase overall metabolic rate, thereby increasing our overall calorie burn.

The study, conducted by Brenna Hill and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University, looked at levels of PYY in normal weight young women over a 24 hour period. Study participants were fed standardized meals as breakfast at 9:00AM, lunch at 12:00PM, supper at 6:00PM, and a snack at 9:00PM. There was no significant difference in caloric content of the three main meals.

As expected, the results showed that PYY peaks after each meal. Interestingly, over the entire 24 hour period, the highest level of PYY was seen after lunch. On further examination, it became evident that this high lunch time peak was due to the fact that there was an additive effect leftover from the PYY increase following the breakfast meal, which was consumed just 3 hours prior to lunch. In other words, PYY levels had not had the chance to decrease back to baseline following breakfast by the time that study participants ate lunch. As the supper time meal was consumed 6 hours after lunch, there was a longer duration of time for PYY to settle out, such that the peak level achieved after supper was not as high as the post lunch level.

It would follow, then, that if a person ate frequently throughout the day, that the PYY may remain elevated throughout the day, thereby keeping hunger at bay and helping to control food intake. This is a hypothesis only, and needs to be tested in further study; other factors such as the caloric content and composition of each meal would need to be considered as well.   In order to make small frequent meals work in the battle of the bulge, these frequent meals need to be substantially lower in calorie count compared to the eating pattern of eating three squares, such that the overall calorie consumption should ideally be lower over 24 hours compared to eating three full meals.

The current study lends support to the idea that eating small frequent meals is a better eating strategy than eating three major meals, and I look forward to seeing what evolves in this interesting area of research!

Note for patients taking medication to treat diabetes: It is important to discuss any possible change in eating habits with your doctor, before making any dietary changes. Some medications that treat diabetes, including some oral medications as well as insulin, are dosed to control your blood sugar after a meal. These medications may need adjustment with a change in eating plan. For patients using meal time insulin, some types of mealtime insulin are easier to incorporate into a smaller, more frequent meal plan than others - talk to your doctor and your diabetes health care team to work out a plan especially for you!

Dr. Sue © 2012 www.drsue.ca     drsuetalks@gmail.com

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Portion Size and the Obesity Endemic

2011-09-09T00:29:00.002-06:00

As blogged previously, portion control (or more appropriately stated, lack thereof) is one of many factors contributing to our obesity endemic. The consumer marketplace is often an enemy in the battle against portion excess and obesity, as there is most often a drive to provide the best value (= the most food) for your buck. I'd like to share a little anecdote from some of my recent travels south of the border to illustrate.

I visited a deli for lunch on a recent sojourn to the US - nothing special, but very popular, and apparently known for its Montreal Smoked Meat sandwiches. In an effort to see what all the hype was about, I looked around, and soon enough I laid my eyes on the deli's biggest selling item:

Hmmm. Not for me. For a family of four? Maybe.

As much as I love smoked meat, I returned to my study of the menu, and found a delicious sounding, lean turkey breast sandwich on rye that I decided I'd like to enjoy instead. Here is what I was served (half of the full serving is viewed here):

I proceeded to a) wonder how the delicious, high fibre European rye bread I had expected had turned into a fiber poor, taste poor alternative; b) place the other half of the sandwich (not viewed) into a to-go box; and c) consume almost the entire portion pictured above. Why? I'd already put away half, which seemed very reasonable... and the turkey was a very lean, healthy source of protein. And darn it, I'd PAID for it! So I fell to the pressures of consumerism - I ate far more than I needed to, and while it initially seemed good that I had made it worth my dollar.... the overstuffed feeling in my belly suggested that it may not have been worth it at all.

While portion sizes vary by country, by city, and by restaurant, I can't help but see a correlation with the enormous portion sizes often found in the US compared to Canada, and the parallel variation in obesity rates (currently 34% in USA, 24% in Canada, and only 11% in a country like Denmark, where portion sizes are scaled down even further).

So I suggest caution, fellow consumers: just halving portions may no longer cut it.

Dr Sue Pedersen www.drsue.ca © 2011 drsuetalks@gmail.com

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Survival Guide to Eating On The Run!

2011-08-31T21:06:00.002-06:00

In today's busy world, it is just about impossible to eat strictly from your own kitchen; inevitably, there will be some times when you have to grab your food on the run. Unfortunately, many of these on-the-go venues can be the worst traps for unhealthy eating. Here's a few tips to help you keep your intake healthy!

1. Ask for the nutritional information.

At most fast food restaurants, nutritional information is readily available behind the counter (or increasingly, on napkins, or even posted on the wall!). Ask for a printout to help you make your selection. A reasonably portioned meal should contain 300-400 calories.

2. Go for the greens - carefully!

Most quick-fix restaurants are aware of the general impetus to improve availability of healthy food choices, and many have provided quality options on their menus. For example, McDonalds' Oriental Chicken salad has 290 calories and 5 grams of fat; the Bacon Ranch salad with balsaming dressing has 330 calories and 16 grams of fat.

Be careful, though, as there are some imposters too: the McDonald's Chicken Caesar has 550 calories and 36 grams of fat, and switching the balsamic for Ranch dressing on your Bacon Ranch salad adds a whopping 200 calories and 19 grams of fat!

3. Portion Control.

At Subway, go for the 4 inch or 6 inch sandwiches (not the 12"). Supersize only your diet pop! A regular hamburger at McDonalds is not an unreasonable treat at 250 calories, but a Big Mac is over double that at 550 calories.

4. Avoid liquid calories.

It is generally advised to eat your calories rather than drink them, as liquid calories are less satiating and leave you hungering for something else. For example, it is better to eat an orange than to drink a glass of orange juice. There are also many hidden calories in beverages; consider that a Grande White Hot Chocolate from Starbucks comes in at 490 calories! For a typical woman who is trying to lose weight, that is almost half her daily Calorie Prescription. If you are a Timmy's fan, avoid the Double Double, and opt for a bit of skim milk and some sweetener - you'll save yourself over 200 calories!

5. Sauces on the side.

This goes for mayo, butter, dressings, and anything else that could be lathered on your food. If you're not sure what comes on top of (or under) what you've ordered, ask, or just ask for any dressings/sauces on the side just in case.

Mustards are lower calorie (some are calorie free!) and don't usually need to be omitted; soya sauce in moderation is low calorie (but high salt); balsamic vinegar is low calorie and tastes great on a salad.

Dr. Sue © 2011 www.drsue.ca drsuetalks@gmail.com

USA Moves from Food Pyramid to MyPlate!

2011-06-11T07:48:00.000-06:00

Despite attempts to engender healthy eating strategies in North America with Canada's Food Guide and the USDA MyPyramid, obesity rates are higher than ever before. On June 2nd, the United States introduced a revolution of sorts to their recommendations - they have thrown out their Food Pyramid and replaced it with a simple, effective strategy: a portion controlled plate!

USDA's MyPlate is the most recent piece in the evolution of America's dietary counseling history (a fascinating history, which you can read more about here). On the MyPlate plan, Americans are asked to portion our meal on our plate into four categories: vegetables, fruit, proteins, and grains. Aside the plate is a circle called 'Dairy', which is meant to represent a portion of dairy product with your meal, such as a glass of skim or 1% milk.

On the website, you can hover over and click on any part of the plate to read more about what each food group should entail.

Some of the guiding principles of the MyPlate system include:

vegetables and fruits should take up half of your plate
vegetables and fruit can be raw, cooked, frozen, or canned, but should not be in oil or with extra high calorie containing sauces
at least half of the grains eaten in a day should be whole grains
eat at least 8 ounces of cooked seafood per week (adults)
enjoy your food, but eat less
avoid oversized portions
drink water instead of sugary drinks

The MyPlate website contains an absolute wealth of information, including interactive links where you can look up caloric information of your favorite foods with MyFood-a-pedia, find out how much you should eat of each food group in order to achieve your personal goal of weight loss, weight maintenance, or weight gain; and even get help in creating a personalized meal plan! I really encourage you to have a look around their website, as there are all kinds of fascinating nooks and crannies of extra reading, and lots of user-friendly downloadable one-page summaries of healthy eating hints that are designed to post right on your fridge.

I've long been a big believer in the power of portion control. In my own research, we've shown that a simple portion control tool is useful even to help insulin using type 2 diabetics lose weight - a group in whom it is particularly challenging to achieve weight loss, as insulin is a hormone that can directly lead to weight gain.

I really take my hat off to the United States for taking this extremely user friendly and pragmatic approach to health eating in America. Though there are some elements that I would change (for example, I would not recommend dried fruit as it is much more calorie dense than fresh fruit), overall, it is an excellent, practical approach that everyone can access (online or in paper form). While this plate approach is only a small step forward, and does not address the plethora of contributors to obesity in our society, our sedentary lifestyles, or the psychological contributors to obesity, in my opinion it is a great way to help people formulate their eating patterns into a healthier approach on a daily basis.

As it currently stands, the Canada Food Guide remains our only standardized tool to guide healthy eating in Canada. We are in desperate need of a more practical approach, as the guide can be confusing to follow, can lead to weight gain amongst older adults, and offers no suggestions for modification for people who need to lose weight (making our Food Guide applicable to only a minority of the population, given that 59% of Canadian adults are overweight). We need to move forward as a nation and follow the good example that the United States has set with the MyPlate program.

Dr. Sue © 2011 www.drsue.ca drsuetalks@gmail.com

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Eat Breakfast - And Make it High Protein!

2011-05-28T07:51:00.001-06:00

We have long extolled the virtues of eating breakfast as an important weight loss and weight maintenance strategy: we often counsel patients to 'eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper'. A recent study gives us more insight as to just how eating breakfast affects our brain activity and helps us control weight - especially if we load it up with a good dose of protein!

Heather Leidy and colleagues looked at the effects of breakfast eating in overweight, breakfast-skipping adolescent girls. Ten girls were provided a normal protein (18g) and a high protein (50g) breakfast (each containing 490 calories) for a week each, and their appetite, feelings of fullness, and brain activation responses (using functional MRI scans) were compared to their baseline values in their usual breakfast-skipping habits.

The study found that the addition of breakfast resulted in significant reductions in brain activation responses to food stimuli several hours later, in areas of the brain that are associated with hunger, desire to eat, food motivation, and reward. Decreased brain activation in these areas (including the hippocampus, amygdala, and others) were associated with lower appetite scores and higher sense of fullness as ranked by study participants.

In addition, the high protein breakfast led to even lower activation in some of these important food intake regulating areas of the brain, compared to the normal protein breakfast.

Therefore, this study shows that eating breakfast may help to regulate brain activity to control eating behaviours later in the day, especially if the breakfast is high in protein.

So, get out your Egg Beaters, your no-salt-added cottage cheese, your skim milk, and your lean cuts of deli meat - there are lots of options to create a high protein, healthy start to your day!

(Please note that if you have any kidney problems, that you should speak with your doctor about how much protein in your diet is right for you, before making changes to the protein in your diet.)

Dr. Sue © 2011 www.drsue.ca drsuetalks@gmail.com

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Video Blog - Managing the Munchies at Work!

2011-05-21T17:28:00.002-06:00

In this video blog, Dr Sue reviews simple tricks to help manage hunger during a long day at the office. Consider baking some chicken breasts on the weekend, which can then be taken to work each day and eaten in various healthy ways for lunch. Bring Ziploc bags packed with healthy greens and store them in the fridge at the office (celery and carrots can make it for a number of hours outside of the fridge)! 100 calorie packs of snacks are available in many varieties at the grocery store as well. Diet pop or sugar free candy is good to have on hand to fight off a craving for sweets!

Dr Sue Pedersen www.drsue.ca © 2011 drsuetalks@gmail.com

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Video Blog: Portion Control Your Breakfast!

2011-01-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

Breakfast is an important start to your day, so consider a new breakfast strategy in your 2011 weight management program!

In this video blog, Dr Sue emphasizes the importance of eating breakfast in maintaining a healthy body weight or losing weight. She describes three ways you can easily portion control your breakfast: use of a portion control tool such as The Diet Bowl (which Dr Sue studied in a research trial); storing a measuring cup directly into your cereal container; or using a coffee mug as your breakfast bowl!

Dr Sue Pedersen www.drsue.ca © 2011 drsuetalks@gmail.com

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Keep your breakfast portions under control!

2009-07-01T08:00:00.003-06:00

Did you know that if you are eating a whole bowl of muslix at breakfast, you are likely eating more than half of your total daily caloric needs in that sitting? On the other hand, you could eat 3 full bowls of Puffed Wheat and barely get up to half your daily caloric needs. Well, here is an easy way to keep your breakfast cereal portions under control, while maintaining the freedom to choose what kind of cereal you like to eat.

The Diet Bowl is a portion control tool that is part of The Diet Plate system, and it is remarkably easy to use. The bowl is intended for breakfast cereal, and using this bowl for cereal will give you a fixed 200 calorie breakfast every day. There are four color coded lines on the bowl, from the bottom up: red, yellow, green, and blue. Each of these lines corresponds to a color coded list of breakfast cereals that comes with the bowl. All you do is find your cereal on the list, fill to the appropriate line, add ½ cup of skim or 1% milk, and there you have it! 200 calories in your breakfast bowl.

Examples of what types of cereal reach which colored line on the bowl:

Red – hot cereals; muslix, granola

Yellow – the sugary types of cereal (Fruit Loops, Honey Nut Cheerios)

Green – All Bran, Corn Flakes

Blue – The only cereal to make it this high is... Puffed Wheat! (and alas no, not puffed wheat squares..)

In my research study on The Diet Plate ® ™ system, I did not insist that the participants use the bowl – this would take away the freedom aspect of these tools. I simply asked participants to use it any day that they chose to have breakfast cereal as their breakfast meal. As could be anticipated, we saw a wide variety of frequency of bowl usage, from people who used it every day, to those who did not use it at all. Our results did show that the bowl in itself was very useful: people who used the plate on 80% or more of mornings were almost 5 times more likely to lose a clinically significant amount of body weight (5% of body weight) compared to people who were not using the portion control system. And just by cutting back the morning nosh!

Cereal is not for everyone, it’s true.... So here are a few suggestions of other ways you can intake about 200 calories at breakfast:

2 pieces of whole wheat toast, plain

1 piece of whole wheat bread with 1 tbsp peanut butter 2 pieces of fruit

½ cup low fat yogurt and 1 piece of fruit

2 eggs and ½ piece of whole wheat toast, plain

Using The Diet Plate!

2009-06-08T10:32:00.001-06:00

There is no magic, or even rocket science, to using The Diet Plate ® ™ ! This is the great thing about this system – it is so easy to use. Here are the basics of how it works:

1. Use the plate for the biggest meal of the day, every day. For most people, this is supper time. Take note that there is a male plate and a female plate (yep, it's a down side to being a woman – men get to eat more!! Truthfully, men generally burn more calories in a day than a same-sized woman, mostly because men have more lean body mass (ie muscle, which is more metabolically active), and less fat mass (less metabolically active), than women. )

2. The plate has 4 portions on it: protein, carbohydrate, a sauce circle, and a cheese square. Choose what you would like to have to eat, and simply portion it inside of the boundaries on the plate! The boundaries for protein and carbs are the areas outlined by the tape measures on the plate, and at the edge, where the white meets the blue on the plate.

3. There is no height restriction to the plate’s portions, with the exception of the cheese square, which is a cube. Yes, you could technically build the Leaning Tower of Mashed Potato in the carb section, but some might consider that defeatist. :) The carb and protein portions should stay inside of their boundaries without being held in there by your hand. So, if you ladle up some pasta and it slips outside of the boundary, put some back until it stays inside the boundaries on its own.

4. You can use the protein or carb part of your meal to hold the sauce inside the sauce circle. For example, if you are having spaghetti with tomato sauce, portion the noodles into the carb section first, then move them so that they surround the sauce circle. Finally, pour the sauce into the circle!

5. Once you have portioned out your meal according to what you have desired to eat that day, push it to the side, and fill the rest with vegetables. Veg are unlimited and can go anywhere on the plate, as long as they are Free Veg and devoid of sauces. Watch out for the Sneaky Veg: peas, corn, carrots, potatoes, and yams. These veggies are actually quite high in carbohydrates, therefore they are not free, and they should be portioned in the carb section.

6. You should only portion food once per meal - no second helpings – except for Free Veg, of which you can take as much as you like!

That’s all there is to it! The beauty behind this portion control system is two fold: It is simple to use, and it allows you the freedom to choose what you like to eat. There will be no falling off the wagon of this diet because of the temptation of forbidden foods, because nothing is forbidden! I always recommend making healthy food choices, but once in a while it is ok to have that special treat. This plate also has great success because it is an attractive plate – it is something that you can be proud to put on the dinner table!

The female plate will provide approximately 650 calories at one sitting (of course this depends upon what you eat, but this is the average figure, averaged over many different types of meals). The male plate wil provide an average of 800 calories per meal.

Bon appetit!

:) Dr. Sue
http://www.drsue.ca/ © 2009 drsuetalks@gmail.com

The Diet Plate Trial!

2009-06-08T10:30:00.001-06:00

The Diet Plate trial, which I conducted at the University of Calgary, was the first trial in the world to study a portion control tool to help people lose weight... and it worked! Let me tell you the story of how the trial came to be.

Knowing how oversized the portions available to us are, and knowing how much they have grown in recent years, I went in search of a portion control plate that I thought contained appropriate portions, would be easy to use, and would be appealing enough that it could join a home dinnerware collection! With these criteria in mind, I reviewed the portion control tools that were available, and I settled on The Diet Plate ® ™ to study, because it fit all of these criteria nicely.

I contacted Kay Illingworth, the CEO of The Diet Plate ® ™ in Britain, and asked her if she would donate plates that I could use in my study. Kay is the inventor of these plates, which she designed to combat her own struggle with overweight. She tells a pretty funny story about the day the plates came to be: she got incredibly frustrated with her inability to control portions, which led her to take her entire kitchen plate set out and to use a marker to draw all sorts of various test portions out on them. Little did she know, it was not a water soluble pen! However, it was worth the ‘investment’: with her final portion determination created, she proceeded to lose weight using the plate. Same for her mother. Word soon spread about these successes... and the rest is history!

Suffice it to say, when I contacted Kay about my study, she was more than happy to oblige...and soon thereafter I had my clinical trial underway.

In this study, we looked at the effectiveness of The Diet Plate to help obese people with Type 2 Diabetes lose weight. Half of the study participants received The Diet Plate and The Diet Bowl to use for a 6 month period, and we compared their weight loss to the weight loss of a control group, who did not receive the plate products. We found that the group using the plate were almost 4 times more likely to lose 5% body weight, compared to controls! This ‘magic number’ of 5% is very important, because studies have shown that if an overweight individual can drop 5% of their body weight, they decrease their risk of getting diseases related to being overweight, and also decrease their risk of dying from these diseases (bluntly put). When we looked at people who were committed to using the plate on 80% or more of study days, we found that they were SIX TIMES more likely to lose that 5% of body weight compared to people who were not using the plate system.

Remembering that all of the participants in the study had type 2 diabetes, the other important thing that we found was that people using the plate system were over twice as likely to require a decrease in their diabetes medication over the 6 month trial compared to people not using the plates. Conversely, people who were not using the plates were over twice as likely to need an increase in their diabetes medication, compared to the plate group! The tendency of T2DM is to get worse with time, as insulin resistance worsens, and the ability of the pancreas to combat this resistance wears with time. So, we were seeing the typical progress of diabetes in the control group, but the plate system was able to put a halt to the progress of diabetes in many of these people, and even to reverse it and improve it in many! This is a powerful testament to the efficacy of portion control.

Given that the entire group that we studied were Type 2 Diabetics, our results are even more impressive, because this is a group of people in whom it is notoriously difficult to achieve weight loss. Much of this has to do with the medications that they are taking, in that most medications that treat diabetes cause weight gain as a side effect. In our study, 94 out of 130 people were taking medication for their diabetes that causes weight gain as a side effect, and STILL we were able to show that this plate system was a success! Individuals who are not diabetic are as likely, if not more likely, to have success with this plate system.

This plate system makes sense because they are simple to use, and because they give you the freedom to choose what you would like to eat. Of course, I always advocate for healthy food choices, but this system does allow you the freedom to choose what you would like to have – you just have to portion it according to the boundaries on the plate!

There are many, many different types of portion plates and similar tools out there. ‘Would a different portion control tool work just as well?’ you might be wondering. Well, at this point in time, the Diet Plate ® ™ is the only one that has been studied and proven to work in a randomized, clinical trial fashion (the ‘gold standard’ type of trial). I am certain that a number of the other tools out there would work, but they need to be studied in a similar fashion for the evidence to be there to recommend them.

Keep an eye on this site for more information on how these plates work, and how to use them. In the meantime, you can check out the website http://www.thedietplate.com/

I would also like to point out that I have no financial interests in The Diet Plate ® ™ company.

Dr. Sue © 2009 drsuetalks@gmail.com

Passion for Portions!!

2009-05-01T02:08:00.004-06:00

Overweight and obesity are spiralling out of control around the globe! In Canada, 59% of adults are overweight, and 1 in 4 adults are obese. Compare this with 1985, when less than 10% of people suffered from obesity. With all that we know about healthy eating and exercise, why are our struggles with obesity only getting bigger over time?

There are many players in the answer to this question, of course, but one of the biggest contributors to the struggle against overweight is a societal problem with supersized portions.

The rise in obesity has been paralleled by an increase in portion sizes in the marketplace. The portion sizes of ready-made foods, as well as foods available in restaurants, have increased by 200% to 500% compared to what they were 25 years ago! So, it is no surprise that the heaping of food you are served at your favorite restaurant is most often far larger than recommended serving sizes. Growing up and living in a society where we see these oversized portions every day can lead us to believe that these serving sizes are appropriate; if we have never seen any different, what else would we think? But if you could transport yourself back in time, it would be easy to see that that big muffin at your favorite bakery is actually what 3 muffins used to be.

So what is an appropriate serving size? There is much confusion around this as well. The portion sizes recommended by the Canada Food Guide, for example, are different from the serving sizes you will find on the products you buy. (Both the Canada Food Guide and the US Food Pyramid are fraught with problems, but more on that another day.) Further to that, the serving sizes that manufacturers list on their packaging are not standardized - this means that while one cereal might list 1/3 cup as one serving, the cereal next to it on the shelf will list 1 1/4 cups as one serving! It is no surprise, then, that research studies have shown that most people are not able to accurately estimate serving sizes, and therefore, are not able to accurately assess their caloric intake.

Another important point is that research has shown us that the larger the portion size that is served, the more food is consumed. So, if you serve up your dinner on a bigger plate with bigger portions, you will eat more at that meal, than if you had served your meal up on a smaller piece of dishware. This may have something to do with the 'finish what is on your plate!' mentality that most of us have grown up with. In 2009, in light of the obesity pandemic we are facing, we need to teach our kids that it is OK to not finish what is on our plates, and that the right thing to do is to stop when we feel full.

For most people, obesity is a lifestyle disease, and clearly, much of the problem comes down to the toxic, supersized environment that we live in. As such, I decided to do a research study of a portion control tool at the University of Calgary called The Diet Plate (R) TM, to see if this simple portion control system could help people lose weight. In this study, we showed that these plates were successful to help obese people with type 2 diabetes lose weight, and it even helped them to decrease the amount of medication that they needed to control their diabetes! (Have a look under RESEARCH for more info about The Diet Plate (R) TM trial.)