Average Portion Sizes Today vs. in the 1950s

Their same data tells a different story when reformatted and correlated with caloric information:

http://i.imgur.com/e8XBN.jpg

Today's average restaurant meal means people are drinking 6x as much water (which the CDC itself recommends you drink significant quantities of each day) and the caloric density (kcal/oz) has had a dramatic decrease, falling by more than 50%!

blame who you like, but exercise and eating well are simple matters of self-discipline, and being able to put aside short term pleasures in favor of long term health and happiness. most things in life aren't 'fun'. doesn't mean you shouldn't do them.

I practice cubicle parkour at work everyday. Sure, I frighten and annoy my co-workers as I seamlessly vault, tuck, and roll through their personal space, but it's what allows me to retain my trim, girlish figure.

^supagold

4 oz is a quarter pound, so the hamburger back then would have been a quarter pounder.

A 12 oz burger would be 3 quarter pounder patties. I don't know ANYONE who eats that. I'm not saying no one does - just that I don't know anyone.

And, any soda is at least 1/2 ice, so a 42 oz fountain soda is like two cans of soda (or slightly less, really).

Something seems wrong with those figures.

I think workplaces should have jungle gyms. And recess.

Don't get me wrong - I hated P.E., too. But, in retrospect, I am glad they ran my butt around the field. I can't imagine what it would've been like if I were chained at a desk the entire day, being forced to listen to someone talk. That is called "office work".

JChief00,

The physical education I received only gave me (and many others) a distaste for sports. The phys ed teachers I had were sadistic ex jocks, obsessed with football and cruelty. Competition and winning were religion to these people. There was no attempt to make exercise fun. I have always been an active person, (hiking, biking, weights, etc.) but have zero interest in team sports. I blame those bastards.

@JChief00, I didn't become overweight until my late 30s. Pretty sure the local elementary school having a jungle gym had nothing to do with me not gaining weight during my late teens, twenties, and most of my thirties. Also I had only one year of PE in high school so shouldn't I have blimped up back then?

I started gaining weight when my job required me to work so many hours that I didn't have time or the mental energy to prepare anything other than simply prepackaged junk. But exercise had a part in it too... spending days and nights and weekends in a cubicle left little time for exercise. Nutrition and exercise both have a part in weight control but neither is controlled by the lack of throwing balls at the heads of children.

People will still be fat b/c all of the easy foods are processed junk filled with sugar, soy, corn and wheat. It's not as simple as just eating more.... we're eating more junk that our bodies can't handle properly.

The Food Police can burn down every fast-food restaurant, and people will still be fat. Why? No physical education at schools any more - and the lawyers also outlawed all playground equipment and games (dodge ball). The kids have nothing to do but stare at their IPads. We have luminaries like John Edwards to thank for that.

This is pretty implausible. So the average size of a soda in 1950 was about about half a can's worth of coke? And the average size today is 2x the size of McDonald's medium? (Large is 32oz.) I'm guessing the burger is the patty weight, so I can buy a 4oz patty in 1950 - that's the size of a regular McDonald's hamburger today. But 3x that now? That would be a Quarter Pounder + another hamburger.

Of course, they don't bother to explain how they arrive at these numbers. But who cares if CDC is pushing policy instead of science? Woah - they should pull their entire Sexual Health site and replace it with one touting the wonders of abstinence!

But, but the BigMac is shrinking! It was much bigger when I was a kid. And the patties' circumference used to match that of the buns. Now it does not.

Hamburgers are growing, but candy bars are ever shrinking, so that should balance out, right?

You know, I have a china pattern that has been popular for a long time. When I browse thrift stores and antique shops, one way I can judge the age of a piece is by the size -plates were several inches smaller 50 years ago than they are today.

42 ounces is average?