Americans are eating more, not just in fast food restaurants, but also in homes and conventional restaurants, a new study shows.
Maren Hegsted, head of the Human Nutrition and Food division in the School of Human Ecology, says people tend to eat more when eating out, but the problem doesn’t end there.
“Even more critically, it makes people think more is better, that is the portion you should see on your plate,” she said. “Even at home they think that is the portion size.”
Eugene Chimwaza, an economics sophomore, agrees.
“It seems meals are getting bigger,” he said. “When you order something and pay for it, you feel you have to eat it.”
International studies freshman Katherine Roademann sees the trend.
“When you go to a restaurant, Semolina’s, for example, you get a huge bowl of pasta,” she said. “But in Italy, where it originated, you only get a little portion.”
Portion sizes over the past 20 years increased for salty snacks, desserts, soft drinks, fruit drinks, french fries, hamburgers, cheeseburgers and Mexican food, the study shows.
“We’re eating more because we’re snacking so much,” said Gloria Sum, a business freshman. “Slowly we’re eating more at meals, too.”
Today, people get almost twice as many calories from snacks than in 1977, rising from 11.3 percent to 17.7 percent.
Calories from pizza and salty snacks rose 143 percent among people younger than 39-years-old.
Hegsted said the trend is partially because people’s expectations of portion sizes have increased.
“When I was young, my mother made muffins,” she said. “At the time, a muffin was two inches tall and an inch and a half wide. Today’s muffins are the size of two or three muffins. I did eat more than one muffin, but I didn’t eat the equivalent of today’s muffin.”
Hegsted also said the official serving size of a glass of orange juice is three-fourths of a cup, but at McDonald’s, a small juice is twice that size.
The trend toward bigger portions gives strong evidence that America’s obesity epidemic is because of people simply eating more.
A growing number of Americans are overweight or obese. In 1999, the CDC said 61 percent of U.S. adults were overweight and in 2000, 38.8 million Americans were obese, meaning they had a Body Mass Index greater than 30. A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is classified as overweight.
The CDC considers a healthy BMI between 18.5 and 24.9.
BMI is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in pounds by the square of their height in inches and multiplying that figure by 703.
For example, a person who is 5-foot 8-inches and weighs 180 pounds would have a BMI of 27 and be defined as overweight.
“Clearly the problem is that Americans are eating too much food,” said Barry M. Popkin, one of the survey’s authors and a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina schools of public health and medicine, in a press release.
Luis Avalos, an English Language Orientation Program student from Chile, sees a difference in how Americans and Chileans eat.
“In Chile, people eat at home,” he said. “They don’t each much McDonald’s and fast food. Families worry that children grow up with good food.”
The study published Jan. 22 in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed data from a 1977-78 Nationwide Food Consumption Survey and three Continuing Surveys of Food Intake by Individuals conducted between 1978 and 1996.
The U.S. food industry has begun to fight back against the perception that they are the cause of America’s weight crisis. Several food companies, including McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Hershey Foods, launched the American Council for Fitness and Nutrition in January just before the portion-size study first appeared.