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Family
Living
Healthy
Life Styles
What is a Serving
Size?
We are faced with an
abundance of food. The size of food portions in this country have
been growing over time and are larger here than in Europe. What
we are finding is more is not necessarily better. We all have
head alarms about the obesity and diabetes crisis facing our nation.
So what is a serving
size? How do we know the number of servings we need to create
a healthy diet and maintain our optimal weight? The equation is
the same today as ever: if we eat more calories than we use, we
will gain weight. Several years ago the United States Department
of Agriculture created the food pyramid. This pyramid specified
the recommended number of servings for each food group.
There are some very
useful and attractive materials to help us determine serving size.
One of the best is a poster that lists the food groups, indicates
the number of recommended servings for each group and gives several
illustrations of what constitutes a serving. This poster could
easily be put on the refrigerator door. It can be found at: http://www.bcm.edu/cnrc/images/pdfs_nyc/USDAposters/servingsize_poster.pdf
Another informative
publication is "How much are you eating?" This item
goes through a typical plate of spaghetti with meatballs to illustrate
how many servings you are eating.
One-half cup pasta is equal to one serving and the typical plate
of spaghetti has at least 4 servings. One slice of bread is considered
one serving but a typical bagel is equilivant to 4 servings. This
publication can be found at: http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/food/how-much/eat.pdf
This leads us to the
difference between food portions and food servings. A portion
can be thought of as the amount of a specific food serve on any
occasion, snack, lunch, dinner, etc. A serving is that amount
of food specified by the Food Guide Pyramid. The portion may contain
many servings. There may also be a difference between the food
label on a product and the serving size specified by the Food
Pyramid. The publication "Food Portions and Servings"
helps to sort all this out. It can be found at http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Insights/insight11.PDF
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