American Restaurants Please Customers By Giving Super-Size Foods

A lot of restaurants in the US serve meals that are actually 2 to 4 times much larger than the recommended serving sizes by the government. This is a study which was presented in Obesity Society in Boston.


The researchers who were from Penn State University and Clemson University in South Carolina made survey of about 300 chefs who were also attending lots of national culinary meetings. They have found that almost all of them believed that that amount of food that they were serving their customers in their respective restaurants have huge influence on how much they eat.

About 17% of the chefs made a description of the portions they gave as large or even extra-large. 76% are claiming that their portions are regular. But a market research from NPD, a normal restaurant meal contains about 60% more calories as compared to home-made foods. Americans, according to the firm are eating 209 restaurant meals per person in a single year.


About 60% of the chefs are claiming that they serve steaks that are 12 ounces or more. This is even though the government’s standard requires the serving of meat as three cooked ounces. Even the government’s definition of pasta serving is only half cup; a lot of restaurants make one or a couple of cups.  Also, the researchers have found that vegetables were served in small portions.

Older chefs tend to give smaller serving portions while the younger ones were those who were prone to giving large overly placed portions. This, according to researchers was credited to modern day restaurant training.

"The older chefs were trained a couple of decades ago when portions were smaller," the experts say. "The younger ones grew up at a time when the cultural norms were bigger servings." 58% of the said chefs believed that diners were the ones responsible for eating up the right amount of food regardless of the portion size of the meal they were ordering. 86% of the chefs were saying that customers can immediately notice if their meal size were decreased by about 25%.

"Portions didn't get this big overnight, so we need to scale back slowly -- 10 percent to 15 percent at a time would be progress," says a nutrition professor in New York. "And we need to change customer expectations."

Mike Adams, a consumer advocate and Author of “The Food Timing Diet,” said that a typical US restaurant would be able to feed the whole South American Family. "People tend to eat what's put in front of them, regardless of the portion size," he says. "In this way, restaurants are actually encouraging customers to overeat."

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