Healthy Portion Sizes Control

Food manufacturers set recommended portion sizes to give us choice. But how clued up are we about what these serving sizes actually are? 

How realistic are the portion sizes set by the food industry? And could we really be doubling our intake of calories, sugar and salt each day without realising?

Biscuits

There are many of us who could chomp through half a packet of biscuits in one go. But did you ever wonder what the food industry considers a biscuit ‘portion’? One well known brandstates in their nutritional information that a recommended serving is just one biscuit. But in reality, who takes only one? This means, by reaching for that second, innocent biscuit, you’re eating double the calories, sugar and fat set by the manufacturer. 

Cake

If you had six adults sitting around a table, and you proudly brought in a small cake measuring just five inches across, you might expect to get a few strange looks. But that’s exactly what some manufacturers reckon is an adequate serving. Check the packaging. Many brands suggest cutting a five inch cake into six portions. That’s a 30g serving each – or three bites. But beware of tiny cakes covered in frosting - one slice of iced carrot cake could contain 26% of your recommended sugar allowance for the day. But can you really stop at one slice?

Tinned foods

You buy a tin of soup, empty the contents into a saucepan, heat and then pour the lot into a bowl and eat it. No, wait. Just because food comes in a small, 400g tin, doesn’t mean it serves one. Many soups as well as tinned beans and macaroni state on the label that they serve two people, giving nutritional information per half tin. But how many of us actually save the second half of the tin for later? Or are we still hungry and end up scoffing the lot?

Pizza

Pizza chains and takeaways vary on individual portion size, stating anything from a 7” to 9” pizza as one serving. So you could be forgiven for picking up an 8” pizza from your local supermarket and assuming it feeds one. Check the label – one 8” supermarket pizza that we saw actually gives the nutritional information per half pizza. 

If you didn’t cut the pizza in half and save the rest for another day, you would be eating twice the amount of salt and saturated fat stated by the manufacturer. Putting it bluntly, depending on the pizza, this could amount to a thirst-quenching 3g of salt per pizza.

Ice cream

Forget all thoughts of extra large ice cream cones and towering sundaes. The generally accepted industry portion size for ice cream is two scoops, equivalent to a 100ml serving. But how many of us overdo this in reality, and sneak a couple of extra scoops in the bowl? 

If you’re one of them, here’s a sobering thought: one 100ml portion of chocolate ice cream can contain around 45% of your saturated fat allowance for the entire day.   

Pasta

We’ve become a world of pasta lovers. But banish all thoughts of plates overflowing with spaghetti. Manufacturers’ recommended serving sizes for pasta range from 75g-100g per person. If that’s difficult to visualise, it’s about the size of a tennis ball, or a clenched fist. If that shocks you, you’re not alone. 

A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that some people overestimated individual pasta serving size by as much as 156%.

Cereals

Depending on the size of your breakfast bowl, you could be eating double the amount of cereal that manufacturers suggest. Most cereal portions are set at 30-50g, which works out as about six dessertspoons. 

Research commissioned in 2007 by the Foods Standards Agency found that a whopping 75% of people unknowingly dished up more than the recommended serving size on the pack; many at least double the amount.

Crisps

Buying a large sharing-sized bag of crisps to munch through with a friend in front of a film? While it’s easy – and tempting – to crunch through half the pack, you might want to bear in mind that the industry reckons a ‘portion’ of crisps is around 30g. 

That works out at about 10 large crisps. And if you do decide to ignore the advice on the packet, remember that one modest 30g serving can contain a not very modest 12% of your recommended daily intake of fat.