http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13090060/

While I agree portion sizes at some restaurants could be decreased, I don't believe it's the government's place to step in and decide just how much food a restaurant should be serving.

There are times when I walk into a fast food joint completely starving and will order a double-pattied burger in a lettuce wrap. Other times I order the smallest burger I can get. If something like this goes through, next thing you know they'll be telling people just how many items they can order as well.

I think overall people are becoming more health conscience and as they do, they're going to start teaching their children better habits and when those children grow up they're going to change the face of the types and amounts of foods being served.

If the government doesn't do it it won't get done, because people will belly up to the restaurants that serve the most food, good for them or not. I feel sorry for the big restaurant chains in this case, because even if they wanted to do "the right thing," competitive forces make it very hard, if not impossible, for them to do it willingly.

I don't like the idea of the government mandating serving sizes, but I doubt market forces, even given an informed populace, will do much about the problem. People know they get too much food in restaurants now, and keep eating it anyway.

Uggg, I'm torn. On the one hand, I agree that portion sizes are out of control. From the monster sized burgers at Carls Jr to the "never-ending pasta bowls" at Olive Garden... it's all just way too much food and something needs to be done. On the other hand, the government manages to mangle everything it touches, especially nutrition. Witness the ill-advised Food Guide Pyramid.

Seems like the nation is stuck between Scylla and Charybdis.

It's just political rhetoric and grand-standing.

What I don't like is this calorie focus.

They want the same calories made to me (6 foot 3) as to a person 5 feet tall.

It's always been like that.

God forbid a taller person eats more calories, or a man eats more than women.

It's all just rhetoric.

They quote the increase in calories during the obesity epidemic but not the fact that fat went down (for men the absolute amount of fat), saturated fat went down and carbohydrates went way up. More good advice from the friendly folks who brought you the war in Iraq.

Looks like more finger pointing to me, but do we really need stuffed crust pizza with dipping sauce and Philly cheese steak double burgers?

At least they can't blame Atkins.

I like big portions so I can have left-overs to take home!

We don't NEED them, but apparently enough people WANT them to keep them on the market.

It's one of those chicken-and-the-egg things, IMO. They wouldn't sell if people wouldn't line up to buy them, but if they weren't offered... no one could buy them.

Consumer demand drives what gets offered, but OTOH, companies can create demand with $$ worth of advertising.

I just can't see how the government putting out the official word on what size serving a restaurant can offer is really going to do anything meaningful

I know "small steps are better than none" but in this case, I can see the food places cutting portion sizes per order, then offering a two-for-one special.

Less food is something they can't screw up. It's always better to eat less if you're overweight, and most people are. One thing Whoa's CRON monkey studies should demonstrate to us low carbers is that less bad food is almost like eating good food. What makes something a poison isn't just the chemical composition of a thing, but also the dose. The nature of anything in our body depends not only on what but how much.

If something is promoting of metabolic imbalance, eating less of that food will correlate perfectly with slowing the weight gain and decreasing imbalance.

If something is conducive with metabolic balance, eating less of that food will only augment weight loss, and metabolic balance should be preserved.


Most of us got REALLY into the carb cycle by being oblivious... by not realizing how malicious the food companies are, and how these foods actually DO kill you. We simply ate the whole thing, because it's human nature to eat all of what you set down to eat. It just so happens the whole thing contained SO much sugar to our archaic metabolisms that we became hugely fat and sick. If portions were half the size, eating the whole thing wouldn't deliver the sugar load it does, and the obesity epidemic would come to a halt.

I without a doubt believe the majority of burden for the obesity epidemic falls squarely on the fast food restaurant industries. I mean there are other factors (for example, a society that has such a sh*t family structure that eating out like that instead of cooking traditional meals is the normal way... too much unnatural stress, too little sleep, etc).
But most of it is their fault. The poison is in the dose, and, the dose has gotten ridiculous. Like all good diseases, it's positive feedback, so one large dose leads to imbalances and disruptions that augment the imbalance, which causes you to need more, etc.

If restaurants were legally obligated to confine all meals calories to a certain percentage of the average adult's calorie intake, the cycle would stop.

Is focusing on calories different than focusing on carbs? Some people can handle more carbs, and may even do better with them, because their bodies need fuel for anabolism - children, men, pregnant women, athletes.

It seems hypocritical to, on one hand, favor government efforts to change food so that you benefit, but not changes where you personally dont.
We shouldn't focus on what is good for us individually, but what is good for the most people. Society as a whole would benefit if portion sizes at restaurants would be cut in half. You know what? Even if they were cut in half, that's STILL well enough food for any normal 6 foot 3 man (like 600+ cals). A restaurant meal would STILL be too much food for a 5 foot woman. They're not going to starve anyone... because the problem here is to much food.

If you don't favor any government intervention, I apologize... but the way you opened with "I don't like this focus on calories" made me assume you WOULD favor the government making it difficult to eat carbs...

I personally do not want the government so involved in my life.

If I want to go out and treat myself to a 12 oz steak a buttered veggies and eat a 1000 calorie meal I will and I do not think its anyone's business but my own.

What is the government going to try and restrict next, the amount of fat that a meal can have? Or maybe require that all restaurant meals follow the food pyramid?

I do believe that some restaurants have portion sizes that are WAY too large, but I don't believe its our governments business to tell restaurants or us how much we can or should eat and forcing us all to live by that.

The freedom to make choices is also the freedom to make bad choices.

And what would the bureaucrats do to limit the serving size in buffets, or take-out pizza or people who order two or three of something because one is two small?

Maybe they can have a government employee at all restaurants who go around taunting those who had too much food on their plates.

I could not agree more.

We ought to have personal choice to live as we please, for better or worse. The potential to make bad choices is a necessary price we must pay for enjoying the merits of living a free society with the capacity to make infinite choice.

However, who defines what is bad? The majority? The majority rules dictate really sucks on the minority. While I understand that living in a pragmatic world there are moments when we must impress the majority's will for the good of society, it should never be called upon to restrict personal choice.

In a free society, one has the right to eat whatever food or do whatever (within the confines of not adversely taking away another's right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness) I fancy without fear or concern from a dissenting majority seeking to prevent me from living as I please based on their own contrasting puritanical notions.

Just remember that you are paying for other peoples' bad choices, through higher healthcare costs and taxes, and the drag these things put on our economy and hiring.