Ice Cream Social

This week (and perhaps next week's as well because it's a biggie) is all about portion size.

Cornell University had a little ice cream social with 85 nutritionists [6], each of whom were randomly given either a large or small bowl and a large or small scoop.  And what did the good folks at Cornell find?  Those with the larger size bowls served themselves 31% more ice cream and those with larger scoops served themselves 17% more ice cream.  Yep, you read that correctly, even nutritionists had difficulty judging the correct serving of ice cream.

If the leading nutritionists have a hard time, what hope do the rest of us have?  Well, we just have to do a bit more prepping.  Smaller plates, smaller bowls, smaller serving utensils all equal less calories. Sure, big cereal bowls and big mugs of hot chocolate look really appealing, but all they equate to in the end are more calories.

Ever go to a swank restaurant and grumble about the portions of food on the plate?  How did you feel at the end of the meal?  Satisfied or still hungry? Or you were just mad because your plate wasn't full?  We eat with our eyes.  We have been trained that big, full plates are appetizing.  What's more, we've also been trained to finish our plates.  And the combination is causing us to get fatter and fatter.

My ah-ha moment (as Oprah likes to say) came with a cereal bowl.  Nothing beat a big bowl of cereal in the morning.  Then I began keeping track of food and when I actually measured out how much cereal I was eating, I realized that it was nearly 3 cups!  3 CUPS!  If you read the label of most boxes of cereal, the serving size is somewhere around 1 cup.  That's right, 1...ONE...uno, un, ein, how ever you want to say it. So basically I was eating nearly 3 times the suggested serving size simply because I was pouring me a bowl full of cereal.  That's an extra 200+ calories a day!  Since then I switched to a large coffee mug, which is just big enough to hold ONE cup of cereal and one cup of milk.  And you know what?  Most of the time, that proves to be just enough...and my cereal lasts longer!

So, how's your bowl of cereal looking?

~a little salt for your tequila & lime (but just a shot, since that is the proper serving size!)