HealthyCanada.com

The trend to super-sizing or value-added meals started with fast food restaurants and quickly spread - along with our waistlines.

It seems everything we eat is getting bigger. Since 1982 the standard size of a hamburger has increased 112 percent. Bagels are 95 percent bigger. Servings of pasta have gone up a whopping 480 percent.  As the size of portions increased so did the size of people. According to Statistics Canada 2.8 million Canadians aged 20 to 64 were considered obese in 2000-01. That's up from 500000 just five years earlier.

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The International Obesity Task Force warns that "excess weight gain now seems to be fundamentally linked to a range of cancers."  And this is hammered home by nutrition experts.

"There are many associations now between what we eat and our health" says Karen Ng-Anderson a registered dietician with the region of Halton. "Things like cancer heart disease stroke and diabetes. These are diseases which really relate quite closely to the diet."

So-called portion distortion has not helped.  In fact one survey of eating habits shows that people continue to eat everything they are served without even knowing that the serving sizes are double or triple what they used to be. The larger portions offered by fast food restaurants which are often a better deal economically seem to make people resistant to change. Professor Philip James chairman of the International Obesity Task Force says "Unwittingly the food industry by going for a super-marketing process has contributed substantially to the problem."

So what is a proper serving? Ng-Anderson says one only has to read Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating.

 "Try and get a good understanding of what a serving size is in the food guide" she says "and try to visualize to some degree when you're eating or when you have food portioned out for you so that you get a sense of how many servings you are eating. For example the recommended serving for meat or fish is three ounces. For most people that doesn't mean a lot. So we try to give tips like well that's about the size of a deck of cards or it's about the size of the palm of your hand. When you order a dish in a restaurant say a steak try to compare it to that deck of cards."

What counts as one serving?

Grain products
1 slice of whole grain bread
30 g of cold bran or oatmeal-based cereal
½ whole grain bagel or pita
1/2 cup (125 mL) brown rice or enriched pasta

Fruits and Vegetables
1 medium-sized fruit or vegetable
½ cup (125 mL) fresh frozen or canned fruit or vegetable
½ cup (125 mL) fruit or vegetable juice
1 cup (250 mL) salad

Milk Products (choose lower fat alternatives)
1 cup (250 mL) milk
50 g cheese
¾ cup (175 g) yogurt

Children 4-9 years: 2-3 servings/day
Youth 10-16 years: 3-4 servings/day
Adults: 2-4 servings/day
Pregnant and Breast-feeding Women: 3-4 servings/day

Meat and meat alternatives (choose lean meats)
50-100 g meat poultry or fish
1-2 eggs
125-250 mL beans or peas
2 tbsp. (30 mL) peanut butter

Our fast-paced lifestyle has caused many people to lose touch with what their bodies are telling them so we eat when we're not hungry and sometimes skip meals when we should eat.

"We've moved very far away from being in touch with what our body is telling us" says Ng-Anderson. "We all identify with what it feels like to be hungry and I think we definitely all identify with what it feels like to be full. Our bodies give very distinct cues. Try and pay attention to them. Stop eating when you have that feeling of fullness."

It seems few people want to carry excess weight. A report from NPD Group Canada on national eating trends showed that 64.1 per cent of adult females and 35.9 per cent of adult males were on a diet in this country in 2001.

"There really isn't a quick fix" says Ng-Anderson. "Many diets purport to be the magic bullet claiming that you are going to achieve some result in an unrealistic amount of time when really what's important is developing habits that are healthy so you don't put the extra weight on in the first place."

It takes time and some planning ahead to develop good eating habits. But nutritionists say most weight loss success stories center around reduced portion sizes. It's a simple fact if you eat less you'll lose excess weight.

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Additional Resources:

Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating