U.S. food portions: Monuments of decadence?

[n2doc]

snip:

But with soaring food prices sparking protests in many countries and more than 800 million people going hungry every day, U.S. food portions are under scrutiny. A lightening of the American plate could ease pressure on worldwide demand, but not everyone is hopeful change will be coming any time soon.

With a bombardment of food ads, many aimed at children, Americans are tempted with an array of food choices. One fast-food chain calls its massive burger a "monument to decadence" while the Wendy's chain calls its "Baconator" a "mountain of mouth-watering taste."

Portion sizes in the United States not only exceed those in less-developed countries, but also in the developed world. In fact, Americans have the highest per capita daily consumption in the world, eating 3,770 calories a day, more than a Canadian at 3,590 calories or an Indian at 2,440, according to data from the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization.

"We've looked at large portion sizes almost entirely in terms of whether it's healthy for us, and now we have to consider is that sort of a demand going to be sustainable," said Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food."

more:

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN2639845320080729

[mrcheerful]

1. Yet how many people actually buy those things daily?

I got a feeling that the majority of america, you know the ones the media ignores unless its a crime story or a story about how unfair it is for the homeless and poor to get free birth control and the poor working man doesn't, eat once a day or once every other day? I mean people I know very rarely have the extra cash to enjoy eating out once a month, so wheres the balance? You wonder where the repubtards get there ideals on the welfare free ride? Stories like this, after all everyone knows how well welfare and homeless people eat and they are always found at fast food joints pan handling so they must be eating fast food. Heck of a Job MSM fuck you.

[Celebration]

2. Doggy bags

Okay, it is a dated term. But it gets a mention in Wikipedia. Without exception, every restaurant that I go to offers the option of takeout boxes. I know parents who take their adult children out to eat and then give them all the leftovers, so they will have something to eat in their apartments the next day or two.

Rather than making the servings smaller, I would suggest the more liberal use of doggy bags.

I haven't been to Wendy's or McDonald's for over a decade, I would guess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftovers

Leftovers from a restaurant meal may either be left behind to be discarded by the restaurant, or taken away by the diner for later consumption. In order to take the food away, the diner may make a request for it to be packaged. The container used for such leftovers is commonly called a doggie bag or doggy bag; the name comes from the euphemistic pretense that the food will be given to the diner's pet, rather than eaten by a person.<5> Doggy bags are most common in restaurants that offer a take-out food service as well as sit-down meals, and their prevalence as an accepted social custom varies widely by location. The term "doggie bag" is now obsolete in (at least) much of the USA. While it is understood, a diner is more likely to request a "takeout box," a "to-go box," or just a "box." Another possibility is that the term "doggy bag" has origins in rural Cambridgeshire, England, where a "dockie bag" is what the lower-class farm hands historically used to carry their lunch each day. That term came from Victorian times when workers were docked pay while they ate lunch; lunch time was therefore "dockie time," and your lunch was carried in a "dockie bag."

[pansypoo53219]

4. as long as you can recycle them.

styrofoam or plastic that is no where near a 1 or 2. but i use them for my palettes. cleaning off glass is such a bitch.

[Warpy]

6. Doggie bags were given on the polite fiction

that you were taking the uneaten portion of that gargantuan steak home to Rover. That's the origin right there.

Nobody needed to know the doggie was you and the rest of the steak would be eaten for breakfast with your eggs or for lunch in a sandwich.

The only "dining out" I do these days is at a Chinese takeout buffet. For eight bucks I can eat for two days, and that's not bad. It also avoids the embarrassment of requesting a bag for the leftovers for the fictional dog who should never be eating anything that high in sodium, anyway.

I've had enough New England guilt and clean plate club stuff shoved at me my whole life to want to avoid most restaurants that pride themselves in supplying a plate piled as high as it is wide. I can't eat like that but I have always seen them full of people who try to.

Overeating is just plain uncomfortable. I wish places would offer half portion plates for those of us who'd like to avoid it.

[DJ13]

3. Reads like a food industry excuse piece to move to smaller portions

....at the same price.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. I don't know--American restaurant portions ARE huge

Foreign visitors comment on it.